TEMPE, AZ — A Tempe police officer chasing a suspect deployed a Grappler to try and stop the vehicle, but records show it was the wrong car.
Records obtained by the ABC15 Investigators show that the vehicle that was mistaken for the suspect’s was the same color, make, model and had the same number of doors.
A Grappler is a device used by police in an attempt to stop a moving vehicle. It deploys from the front of a police car and attaches to the suspect vehicle’s back tire.
The pursuit was in October 2023, but it has taken nearly a year for the Tempe Police Department to release the body camera video through a public records request.
Tempe police were assisting the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for an aggravated assault suspect through the town of Guadalupe.
A report by a detective with Tempe’s Action Response Squad said while approaching the area, the radio became overwhelmed with different officers attempting to give out the location and direction of travel. That’s when the officer located a white Buick Verrano, which matched the description of the suspect vehicle.
There is no video of the actual deployment because the Tempe Police Department does not have dash cameras in their patrol cars. However, the body camera footage shows the seconds after police stopped the wrong vehicle.
The video shows an officer with his gun drawn telling a woman to step out of the vehicle. “You don’t need to be scared,” he tells the woman.
He goes on to yell commands, “Put your hands on top of your head when you come out.”
Officers ask if anyone else inside, the woman responds, “my daughter.”
“Oh s***,” an officer responds.
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As an officer tells the woman to keep walking backward towards them, another officer says they need to get the daughter out of the car.
The report revealed that the Grappler deployment punctured the gas tank.
“If there’s gas leaking and the daughter is in there, let’s go get her out,” an officer says on video.
Tempe police say no one was injured.
The body camera video captured one of the officers raising concerns about the pursuit. He says he texted another officer, telling him, “That’s sloppy, I pulled my guys away,” he says on video. “Just sloppy, we have too many units.”
Jared Keenan, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona reviewed the body camera footage at the request of ABC15 of the officers mistakenly stopping the wrong car.
“That should scare anybody,” he told ABC15.
“Because what this says is, ‘if you happen to have a car that looks like a car that the police are searching for, you might be violently stopped in this way as well,’” he said.
According to the report, the man inside the vehicle that was mistakenly stopped told officers that they were taking a detour because the highway was closed. He admitted they were in a rush and sped through town.
“This is why there are license plates that individualize vehicles and can allow the police to determine whether it is the actual vehicle they're looking for or not,” Keenan added.
The video released to the ABC15 Investigators is completely blurred — this was done by the records department with the Tempe Police Department. A spokesperson for the department said their policy is to place a “medium blur” on their video records that are released.
A spokesperson for the City of Tempe said the risk management department paid a reimbursement of more than $500 to the driver.
As for the incident, no officers were disciplined, but a spokesperson for the department said they did receive further training on properly identifying suspect vehicles.
Have a news tip? Email Investigator Nicole Grigg at nicole.grigg@abc15.com.
