Phoenix, Arizona

The Phoenix Police Department (PPD) has been experiencing several crises which captured local and national attention. In 2018, the PPD led the nation in police shootings (Rosenberg, 2019), leading to several local and national investigations and studies of the city’s pattern of shootings in 2019 (Rojek et al., 2018). In 2020, PPD came under national scrutiny for how it responded to large-scale protests following the death of George Floyd, President Trump's visits to Phoenix, and public concerns about racial injustice and police brutality. In August 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was beginning a pattern of practices investigation into the City of Phoenix and the PPD.

As part of the department's response to these issues, the PPD began to re-emphasize its Early Intervention System (EIS), which had been inactive since 2014. Early Intervention Systems identify officers at risk for police misconduct using administrative data and provide these officers with non-punitive intervention to prevent future misconduct. Through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) SMART Policing Initiative (SPI), the PPD seeks to expand and build on its current work with ASU and enhance the EIS body of literature to develop (and evaluate) a new, data-driven EIS.