PHOENIX — It wasn’t the wisest place for Kenneth McDonald to do what he did.
On August 2, 2022, McDonald continued to ride his bike by a pair of on-duty officers parked at the main Phoenix police union and yell insults at them.
Minutes later, McDonald would find himself bloody and under arrest in the back of the police SUV after a violent arrest by a handful of officers.
“I called him a dumb***, and it’s very clear that sent him over the edge,” he told ABC15.
McDonald’s arrest was not high-profile.
No one was killed or severely injured. No shots were fired. There wasn’t a press release or news coverage.
So while an arrest like McDondald’s can fly under the radar, it’s also the kind of case that has grabbed the attention of federal investigators.
“When you look at it, and you look at the (number of officers), what are the chances that I could have a situation with police on the street and two of them are on the misconduct list, the ‘Brady’ list?” McDonald told ABC15 in an interview. “It means there’s a big problem.”
Phoenix police are under a sweeping Department of Justice pattern or practice investigation that’s focused on five areas, including excessive force and retaliation against protesters.
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The federal probe has been open for 22 months.
And during that time, the DOJ has finalized similar investigations into two other police departments: Louisville (March 8, 2023) and Minneapolis (June 16, 2023).
While the DOJ launched investigations into those cities because of the deaths of Breanna Taylor and George Floyd, their final reports highlighted multiple lesser-known cases similar to McDonald’s as problematic examples of excessive, aggressive, and retaliatory policing.
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For the Louisville Metro Police Department, the DOJ concluded, “LMPD violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech critical of policing.” And in Minneapolis: “Criticism of officers, even with profanity, is protected speech. Nevertheless, MPD officers routinely respond to protected speech with arrests and with force.”
The screenshot below is from the DOJ’s report on Minneapolis:
After McDonald was initially handcuffed and placed into the police SUV, several more officers arrive. One of them was Christopher Turiano, who brought a digital fingerprint scanner.
When McDonald declined to give his fingerprints, Turiano and three other officers forced him to the ground in the prone position, where they kneeled on his back and pushed his face into the pavement in order to pry his fingers open.
Phoenix police policy states that “physical force will not be used to obtain fingerprints.”
But in an internal review of the incident, supervisors found that the use of force was justified.
In the DOJ findings in Louisville and Minneapolis, federal investigators focused on how the departments had inadequate systems for reviewing uses of force.
“Supervisors miss serious policy violations and do not identify officer misstatements,” according to the DOJ investigation into Minneapolis. “The lack of proper force review is dangerous. Where officers are not held accountable for misconduct, MPD loses the opportunity to correct officers’ problematic tactics. Officers who use unreasonable force can go undetected, putting community members at risk.”
When asked whether using force to obtain fingerprints from a handcuffed person was in policy, a department spokesperson referred ABC15 to the policy cited previously.
McDonald was initially booked on charges of aggravated assault, criminal trespassing, and obstructing government operations.
Prosecutors eventually only moved forward on an aggravated assault charge.
“You see my finger moving over and touching (Turiano’s) hand,” McDonald told ABC15 when asked what was the basis for the assault charge.
But McDonald said he wasn’t exactly sure at what point officials claimed it occurred.
“You know we never got to go to trial,” he said. “They’re in charge of the evidence and they just give you what they want. And, it’s just a wild thing to see.”
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McDonald represented himself in his criminal case.
On May 17, which was the morning of the trial after a jury was selected, Maricopa County prosecutors abruptly dismissed the charge against McDonald with prejudice.
The judge ruled the day before that past excessive force misconduct by Turiano could be entered into evidence and would be fair game for the jury to consider.
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And then overnight, prosecutors claimed they just learned another involved officer, Brian Alvarado, had been recently caught falsifying timesheets for off-duty overtime.
ABC15 sent Phoenix police a request for comment on McDonald’s case on June 22.
In a response sent June 23, a department spokesperson emailed the following:
“This incident was recently brought to the attention of those at the highest level of our department. As a result, an investigation has been initiated. The Phoenix Police Department is committed to continuous improvement and strengthening community trust.”
The Department of Justice has not indicated when its investigation into the City of Phoenix will be completed.
Contact ABC15 Chief Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@ABC15.com.
