7 July 2nd - July 8th, 2026 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Calling the Cops on the Cops Lyft rider called 911 after Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy tackled elderly deaf driver. BY CLARISSA SOSIN J oanne Joshua hid in the back- seat of the Lyft she’d called and worried she was going to die. A trip to Walmart in San Tan Valley had suddenly turned violent. A Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy had pulled over the car and, just moments earlier, had tackled the driver to the ground. The two men — one an armed law enforcement officer, the other a deaf 79-year-old man — now struggled outside on the other side of the car door from her. The 66-year-old Joshua hid out of sight, listening to them roll around on the gravel. She worried she would be next. She made a split-second decision that she didn’t even remember making until a private investigator told her about it a couple of months later: She dialed 911. She called the cops on the cops. “I’m on Hunt Highway. Your officer is, is attacking this deaf driver, my Lyft driver! I hear a, I hear a siren. I hope someone’s coming to help because I’m in the back seat. I’m scared,” Joshua can be heard saying to the dispatcher in a recording of her 911 call, obtained by Phoenix New Times. “The guy’s deaf! He doesn’t understand!” The Lyft driver was Thomas Garro: a tiny, 5-foot-3 man who communicates in American Sign Language. New Times first reported his violent encounter with law enforcement in April. What had started for him as a short, routine fare had escalated after he was pulled over close to Joshua’s destination. Garro, who cannot lip-read, struggled to communicate with the deputy, Aaron McRae. The encounter ended with Garro on the ground and handcuffed so tightly his wrists bled. Police records revealed that Joshua called 911 on the deputy. “I just remember them saying, ‘Officers are on the scene,’ and I’m like, ‘Yes, I understand that. That’s why I’m calling you, because I’m scared of the officers,’” Joshua told New Times in June. Garro’s attorney, Jesse Showalter, said it’s obvious in the 911 call audio that Joshua is terrified and hiding in the back of the car for no other reason than being scared of the deputy. “She’s fearing for her own life,” he said. “That’s how out of control that sheriff’s deputy was.” Joshua, who is Black, said that she thinks if Garro hadn’t been white, McRae might have killed them both. “That’s how crazy it was,” she said. Garro and his lawyer have not yet filed a notice of claim with Pinal County. The 180-day deadline for his case is in early July. Pinal County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Sam Salzwedel declined to comment specifically on the incident because of the possible pending litigation but said that the department is aware of the 911 call and that McRae is not under investigation for the incident. Salzwedel said he was not immediately aware of other instances when citizens called 911 on deputies, nor did he have information about the agency’s training, policies and procedures for interacting with people who are deaf or hard of hearing. He confirmed that McRae had neither a body camera nor a dashboard camera because he is not in the units assigned a camera through those programs. Showalter said cases like Garro’s, in which footage of the incident is minimal or non-existent, are common in Pinal County because the deputies don’t wear body cameras. They are also riskier to fight in court in a civil case. It becomes the officer’s word against the plaintiff’s, and if the case goes before a jury, it might choose to trust the officer. The 911 call is a game-changer — and a first for Showalter. He doesn’t think he’s ever had a case against law enforcement where someone called 911 on the officer during the incident. “Here it’s clear that we have an inde- pendent witness with no skin in the game who is saying unequivocally: This is a problem caused by Pinal County Sheriff’s Office,” he said. ‘OK, let me shut my mouth’ The traffic stop had started off tense, Joshua said. McRae seemed irritated from the moment he approached the door, and it got only worse as he and Garro struggled to communicate. “I don’t know if he was irritated because he was deaf and hard of hearing. I don’t know what it was,” she said of McRae. “He had attitude from the very beginning.” Garro had made it clear from the start that he was deaf, she said, but that didn’t seem to matter. McRae kept talking to Garro — even cussing and yelling at him — despite Garro’s inability to hear him. Joshua watched the two men struggle to communicate as Garro handed over his license and registration. When McRae pointed out to Garro that his insurance card was expired, Joshua tried to intervene and explain that Garro couldn’t under- stand him. But the deputy shut her down. “Oh yes, he does understand me,” he snapped at her, she said. “And that’s when I said, ‘OK, let me shut my mouth.” She also handed over her identifica- tion, and she and Garro waited in the car for at least 45 minutes as McRae ran their information. After a while, she wanted to leave. She was anxious to be done with the deputy and to get to Walmart. She wrote a message to Garro in her Notes app: “I’m scared to get out. I could walk to Walmart but he’s yelling.” Garro read it and got out of the car and opened her passenger door, she said. That’s when McRae exploded. “The sheriff is yelling, ‘Get back in the car! Get back in the car!’” she said. “‘Get back in the effing car!’” Garro, of course, couldn’t hear him. He didn’t understand. “The sheriff was just yelling at him louder, like that was going to help,” Joshua said. Then McRae slammed her door shut, grabbed Garro and pulled him to the ground. Joshua could no longer see them, but she could hear them. She called 911. She hoped the arrival of more deputies would defuse the situation. McRae’s version of events is laid out in two different reports — the CAD distribu- tion, which documents officer communi- cations with dispatch, and the incident report. Both describe an encounter in which McRae is communicating with Garro, who responds and understands him, and even argues with him. Pinal County Sheriff’s deputy Aaron McRae, photographed by Tom Garro during their tense interaction in January 2026. (Provided by Tom Garro) A Pinal County Sheriff truck. (Mesa0789/Flickr/CC BY-ND 2.0) >> p 8 | NEWS |
