Police in Phoenix, Arizona fatally shot a man sitting inside his parked car, reigniting protests and outrage against a department known as one of the deadliest in the country.
The shooting took place in West Phoenix on Saturday afternoon. Witness images released by local councilman Carlos Garcia showed a group of at least four officers surrounding a vehicle and rapidly firing a round of bullets at the car. Spectators could be heard pleading with officers to lower their weapons. The video captures an officer yelling, “Stop moving, I’m going to shoot you!” as close witnesses they shout: “Don’t shoot!”
The victim, identified as James García, was pronounced dead in the hospital.
Police authorities said officers responded after a person who called 911 said a man who had threatened to kill him earlier had returned with a knife. When officers arrived, authorities said, “they noticed an adult man sitting in a car parked in the driveway.” Officers ordered him to get out of the vehicle and he refused and showed a pistol, according to the department’s account. An officer smashed the passenger window, while two officers fired a quick round of bullets directly at the vehicle, the department said, alleging that it refused to drop the weapon.
Police declined to say if the man they killed had any connection to the original call. When asked if James Garcia was the suspect with a knife referenced in the 911 call, a spokeswoman, Mercedes Fortune, told The Guardian: “We don’t know yet.”
On Monday, police released short camera footage of the body of an officer who arrived on the scene after the shooting. The footage blurs Garcia’s image, but captures an officer removing a pistol from inside the car. However, the police refused to post body camera images from the moments before and during the shooting.
Witnesses at the scene, as well as a friend of James García, questioned the police account and said the video makes it clear that the officers’ escalation was dramatic and they suddenly used deadly force.
Mayor Kate Gallego, who promised reforms in the wake of the George Floyd protests, did not respond to a request for comment and has not released a statement on the recent murder.
“I have no words to say that this has happened again. It is disgusting, ”said Jocquese Blackwell, a local lawyer representing the family of Dion Johnson, another man who was recently killed by police in similar circumstances. “These officers are acting like they are in a video game. This is not a game. These are real lives. “
Jamaar Williams, a member of the Black Lives Matter Phoenix chapter, said that “there was no justification for what happened”: “This man was locked in a car, alone. He literally had nowhere to go and you’re holding him at gunpoint, For whose safety? Who is in danger?
Civil rights activists and lawyers across Phoenix said this latest murder was part of a police pattern that unnecessarily uses brutal and deadly force. Local police were already facing widespread reaction for killing Johnson, 28, who had been sleeping in his car when police shot him in May. The fact that this latest murder occurred on camera, amid intense local and national scrutiny of police violence, was yet another indication of the department’s deep-seated problems, they said.
Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the US, has had one of the highest rates of police shootings and police killings of civilians. Modest reform efforts have faced intense resistance from the police union and city council for years. The city only adopted body cameras last year and, until recently, it was the only major city that lacked a civilian review board, meant to oversee the department. Its creation has made little difference, activists said.
“These reforms do nothing because we have to keep seeing our people killed on the streets,” said Williams, who has been pushing for the police department to fade away. “These reforms are shit. They are not mechanisms that facilitate the security we need, because the police do not provide security. They keep throwing the police into social trouble, and it’s killing us. ”
In 2018, Phoenix officials attributed the increase in police violence cases to the behavior of civilians, alleging that officers were facing increasing violence and threats. But lawyers have argued that there was no evidence to corroborate those claims, and have pointed to cases in which police have brutalized people and then accused them of assaulting officers.
“Phoenix formed committee after committee to provide recommendations on what to do to reform this department,” said Heather Hamel, a civil rights attorney. “But the fact is, this police department is inherently violent.”
Hamel represented a blind man who was approached by an officer in a public toilet after he allegedly got too close to the police. Later, the man said on camera that he did not realize that his assailant was an officer and that there was no obvious reason for the officer to attack him. However, the man was arrested for “aggravated assault” against an officer. Prosecutors later declined to press charges.
“They resort to violence as a first step,” said Hamel.
When Phoenix police were recently forced to report every time they pointed their guns at people, the data showed that the majority of civilians detained at gunpoint were people of color, with black residents disproportionately targeted.
“These officers often go into situations with some aggression, with weapons on,” said James Palestini, another local lawyer. “There is definitely a sense of ‘us against them.’ They are not looking to scale down. “
Palestini said cases like Saturday’s murder have generally received minimal attention, and that the protest movement was helping to expose the brutality: “Many of these incidents occurred in the past and never came to light, and these officers they are still working. “
Recent protests against police violence in Phoenix have been met with mass arrests of youths and police have used tear gas and other weapons to disperse crowds, said Steve Benedetto, a lawyer representing activists. “Most of the people we’ve been talking to have been deeply traumatized.”
Councilman Garcia wrote on Facebook that he was not surprised “Phoenix PD continues to respond violently to calls.”
“We must all continue to ask for transparency and accountability,” he said.
