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Mayor Phil Gordon Discredits Report
on Police Shootings in Phoenix
He calls the ColorLines story "a shameful piece of rag"
By Eduardo Barraza
BARRIOZONA
November 15, 2007
It just took a few hours after BARRIOZONA released a story about a national investigation that points out that Latinos in
Phoenix are more likely than Latinos in other major cities to be shot and killed by a police officer, for City of Phoenix Mayor
Phil Gordon to be on TV news calling the story “a shameful piece of rag.”
Apparently, BARRIOZONA’s own story about the ColorLines report set into motion the Mayor’s public information office,
which surely after assessing the caliber of what was published by the magazine, set off to read the report and find
elements to rapidly discredit it.
Instead of challenging the report by using City’s data, Gordon preferred to discredit the report by also calling it “a shameful
piece of literature.” Some of the Mayor’s statements to 12 News reporter Melissa Blasius were incredibly politically
incorrect. Instead of citing City’s data on police shootings, Gordon referred to the cities of Miami and Detroit as a point of
comparison with Phoenix, implicitly stating Phoenix residents should feel safer. He also said individuals who have been
shot and killed by officers “deserved it.”
BARRIOZONA contacted ColorLines’ staff on Thursday, November 15, 2007 to obtain their opinion on the Mayor’s
comments. Alfredo DeAvila, Senior Program Associate for the Applied Research Center —publishers of ColorLines—
spoke to us over the phone from Oakland California. DeAvila acknowledged he had watched the 12 News video, and
cracked up when we asked what he thought about Gordon’s statements.
“Mayor Gordon’s words were very interesting to us. He was thinking that we did not take into consideration national
information from the FBI. In all this national investigation that we’ve done, we found out that the FBI’s information is
information and data that the City itself submits to them,” said DeAvila. “So when we made the investigation, we looked at
newspapers, information that is reported in the news. We went ahead and looked at different types of information. What
we have found out is that almost everywhere, the FBI’s information is not accurate; it is lacking a lot of data that has been
simply reported in the news.”
DeAvila emphasized the big discrepancy between what the FBI has and the information ColorLines obtained in its
investigation. “We feel it is the City’s obligation, not the FBI’s, to collect all the data. But the City is the one that submits the
data to them. They themselves are the ones who are reporting their own information. And if the City itself is being negligent
with its own reports, additional data is going to be available anyway. But for the Mayor to say that, because we are a small
magazine, our story is not valid, that’s something a little ridiculous.”
The Applied Research Center (ARC) is a respected institution that has been conducting research, advocacy and
journalism for the past 25 years. ARC has offices in Oakland, Chicago and New York. The center has been publishing
ColorLines for the past 9 years. Since then it has become a leading national magazine specializing in multi-racial issues.
“As an institution, we have conducted much more complicated investigations than this,” said DeAvila. “We were not aware
that Phoenix would come up high in the numbers of Latinos being killed by Police. The main reason we did this
investigation was because we wanted to analyze police shootings in cities with more than 200 thousand people as our
departure point. Our investigation emerged pointing to Phoenix as one of the cities with the highest percentages of Latinos
being killed by Police.”
DeAvila, a former United Farm Worker organizer, stated that the data collected wasn’t very surprising. “If you ask me if I am
surprised by this data, I’d tell you that it is hard to be surprised when you take into consideration everything that’s going on
in regards to all the attacks against immigrants in Phoenix. We have seen in recent years how the Minuteman, the Border
Patrol, and politicians have come up with irrational and even racists measures, blaming the undocumented for everything
that is happening in Arizona. That creates the types of attitudes in society that you see in Arizona. In fact, we are surprised
that there is not more violence involving the police and the community.”
DeAvila pointed out that nationally, police departments have followed a policy that allows the use of any necessary force to
protect the officer’s life. “But most of the time,” —says DeAvila— the excuses that police officers offer don’t sound credible
or valid.” DeAvila lamented that police departments conduct their own internal investigations, thus giving the impression
that they are in the best interest of the community, when in reality “they are in the interest of covering their own butts to
avoid more lawsuits.”
DeAvila said his magazine hasn’t been contacted by the Mayor’s office, but wants to thank Mayor Gordon for all the publicity
that he has generated for ColorLines. “He thinks we will sell more magazines,” said DeAvila. “Reality is that we don’t sell
as many magazines as people visiting our web site. What the mayor has caused is that more people will read our report,
and more people will find out what the heck’s going on in America.”
Copyright © 2007 Hispanic Institute of Social Issues
Grassroots Journalism
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