In February 2025, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the rest of the officers had attended a “highly publicized and public event” and thus could not expect to remain anonymous. Their names were officially released in July after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected their appeal. ‘BE WARY’ During the Great Recession, cities around the country struggled to hire and retain police. Phoenix was even more austere than most. In 2008, the city instituted a hiring freeze that lasted until 2015. Over the years, as veteran police officers retired with no one to replace them, the depart- ment’s roster shrank. Around the country, these dynamics increased the pressure on departments to recruit and hire new officers, and fast. “I didn’t see anything that looked quite as stark as Phoenix” in terms of Recession-era police hiring freezes, said Ben Grunwald, a Duke University law professor and criminologist who studies police misconduct and employment trends. Grunwald has also analyzed data from AZPOST. “It’s basically zero (hires) from 2009 to 2014,” he said. In 2015, the city began a hiring spree. Since then, City Hall and Phoenix police have worked to eliminate a deficit of around 600 officers they say are needed on Phoenix’s streets. To do that, they’ve drawn from a pool of officers in other cities who — whether running from misconduct investi- gations in their old agencies, or for more benign reasons — are looking for a change. Initially, the department expressed concerns about so-called “lateral” trans- fers from other departments. In 2017, the lieutenant who led recruitment efforts told the Arizona Republic, “We’ve learned that (lateral moves) are very strong indicators we should be looking very closely at.” He continued: “We barely manage to hire two a month … we just cannot survive them coming here and making mistakes.” In 2021, the city intensified its recruiting efforts. It rolled out raises across the board and added hiring bonuses of up to $7,500 for lateral trans- fers from other departments. In 2022, the city council approved the same amount in retention bonuses for existing officers and created new positions for civilian investigators. At the time, police hiring data showed that the department rejected the vast majority of lateral applications — as many as 95% in 2021. Then-Assistant Chief Bryan Chapman told the city council’s public safety subcommittee that this was because they failed to meet Phoenix’s hiring standards. During the background investigation process, some applicants “may tell us things that their previous employer is not aware of, and/or we’re not comfortable with bringing them forward,” he told councilmembers. This stance is in line with best prac- tices promoted by organizations such as the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), which cautions that departments should be careful when offering new recruits steep bonuses or big pay bumps. “Agencies also have only a limited ability to learn about any misconduct an officer may have committed at a prior agency,” PERF warned in an August 2023 report on the police “staffing crisis.” It cautioned agencies to “be wary of lateral recruitment.” ‘SCREAMING’ FOR NEW OFFICERS Just three months after the Phoenix City Council approved the new raises and bonuses, Phoenix’s human resources department presented a new plan to offer even higher raises to police officers during a remote meeting of the Human Resources Committee. The meeting was not recorded or attended by any member of the public. According to the minutes, the committee approved the proposal after eight minutes of discussion. The next week, the city council consid- ered the plan during a public hearing. Over objections of some residents who ques- tioned new raises for police under federal investigation, the council voted 8-1 to approve the raises, which cost the city nearly $20 million. Phoenix police were now the highest-paid in the state. Within months, department officials reported improvements to the city council, including the hiring of more offi- cers from out of state. “We have seen a significant increase based on the market adjustment that was approved by the council to make Phoenix police officers the highest-paid officers in the state of Arizona,” Chapman told the public safety subcommittee in September 2022. “We continue to see increased attention and inquiries, not only from in the state of Arizona but across the country.” By March 2023, Chapman was telling the subcommittee that he was hoping to recruit 40 to 50 lateral officers from other agencies per year. The following months, after secret contract negotiations, brought a third raise for Phoenix officers in as many years. In October 2023, Commander Sara Garza, a recruitment lead for the Phoenix police, reported that hiring exceeded attrition for the first time in several years. She credited the successive pay raises. Scotty Bach was a Seattle police officer when he went to the ‘Stop the Steal’ fiasco in DC five years ago. So why is he now carrying a badge in Phoenix? >> p 10 (Getty/Brent Stirton)
