Phoenix City Council Funds $3M To Police Oversight Board

PHOENIX, AZ — By a vote of 7-2, the Phoenix City Council has approved to fully fund a new civilian oversight board. The vote, which allocates $3 million to the Office of Accountability and Transparency, marked the conclusion of a contentious budget-related debate that last week led councilmembers to multiple impasses and, ultimately, a five-day delay.

The council convened Monday to again take up the budget and the issue of funding the oversight board, which was itself narrowly approved in a historic 5-4 vote back in February.

Before Monday's vote, Mayor Kate Gallego noted, "Our city has been having a robust conversation about what policing looks like," adding that "the debate has fundamentally changed in the last two weeks."

Indeed, the vote followed in the aftermath of the nationwide protests over the killing of George Floyd — as well as the local police killing of Dion Johnson, who, like Floyd, died on May 25 in an incident that has sparked outrage over both an officer's actions and the apparent indifference by other cops at the scene. There's also a history of violence at play: In 2018, Phoenix officers were involved in 44 shootings, among the highest recorded rates in the nation.

But in late 2019, it was a viral video — which showed Phoenix officers pointing their weapons at a family and their 4-year-old daughter — that drew even more momentum for the creation of an independent investigative body.

Before Monday's vote, council member Carlos Garcia, who proposed the creation of the oversight body, argued that the city budget "is a moral document, it reflects the value of our community."

Garcia added that when the community asks to "defund the police," it is the community's way of "asking us to invest in them."

"We have the opportunity now to change the way we've been doing things," he continued. "What does it say about us leaders if we continue to ignore what the community is asking for?"

However, despite calls from activists and protesters to "defund the police," Monday's vote did not go that far, nor did it affect the additional $25 million allocated to the police budget for the upcoming year, a boost that will bring it to roughly $745 million.

During the hearing, Councilmember Sal DiCiccio, one of two nay votes against the budget proposal, blasted his fellow lawmakers as "cowardly politicians" and decried the creation of oversight board with the power to investigate police abuses as "a new anti-police committee."