Here’s how often Phoenix police officers point guns at kids. What to know

Phoenix police officers pointed their guns at minors almost 1,600 times over nearly four years – and most of the kids who faced police firearms in the city were children of color, an Arizona Republic investigation found.  

The number of gun points at kids rose sharply in recent years: Between 2021 and 2023, gun points at minors more than doubled, the Republic’s analysis of police data found.  

That surge happened even as the Phoenix Police Department was under investigation from the U.S. Department of Justice for how officers use force.  

Phoenix police spokesperson Donna Rossi said there were “many possible contributing factors” to the jump in the number of gun points, “one of which would be the improvement of reporting.”  

She did not respond to a request to identify any other contributing factors.   

Police and some experts said evaluating the incidents without knowing the details of each was difficult. But obtaining those details from the Phoenix Police Department can take months, and sometimes years.   

The Police Department has no specific policy outlining when officers can point their guns at people.  

And facing a police gun can have lasting effects on kids’ mental health, worldviews and perceptions of law enforcement, according to one child psychologist interviewed.  

Here’s what you need to know.  

What are the rules for Phoenix police about gun pointing? 

The Phoenix Police Department doesn’t have a specific policy outlining the circumstances under which officers can draw and point their firearms at individuals.  

Officers instead comply with a “host” of state laws governing self-defense and use of force, police spokesperson Rossi said.  

Police in Phoenix have the discretion to decide when to point guns at someone, another department spokesperson confirmed.   

Neighboring agencies in Mesa, Scottsdale and Glendale also don’t have policies explicitly addressing when officers can point their guns in policy. 

But some departments in the state do: For example, the Chandler Police Department’s use of force policy bars officers from “exhibiting” firearms unless they have a “reasonable belief” that they may imminently use them. Officers also have to report whenever they draw their guns. 

Researchers have found that when agencies have more restrictive use-of-force policies, it happens at lower rates. 

But one expert The Republic spoke with said an attempt to create a more specific policy on gun points in Phoenix would likely “lead to a quite lengthy policy that wouldn’t contemplate all circumstances anyway.” 

“There is no single action that guarantees proper use of force,” Michael Scott, director of Arizona State University’s Center for Problem-Oriented Policing and a former police chief, wrote in an email. “And no matter what is done, mistakes of judgment (or good judgment but unfortunate outcomes) will sometimes occur.”     

Read the full investigation: ‘Terror’ at gunpoint: Here’s how often Phoenix police are aiming guns at kids

Do Phoenix officers have to record every time they point guns at people? 

Yes. The policy requiring officers to record and report when they point guns at someone went into effect in August 2019, after the Police Department faced national scrutiny over officer use of force twice in quick succession: 

First, because Phoenix officers shot at more people in 2018 than law enforcement in any other city in the nation. The city commissioned a study to help understand the sudden jump, and the authors of that study recommended tracking pointed gun incidents.  

Then, because a bystander-filmed video showing Phoenix officers pointing guns and screaming expletives at a family went viral. Police stopped the family because their 4-year-old was accused of stealing a doll from a dollar store.  

A Police Department spokesperson said the department started tracking officers’ gun points in 2021. But the agency’s posted data stretches back to mid-2020.  

A new use-of-force policy the department adopted in February requires officers to report each “show of force” — every time they point not just their firearms but also less-lethal weapons at people. 

What kids did Phoenix police point guns at most, and where?  

Phoenix police officers pointed guns at people an average of 14 times a day, at least once at a minor, between January 2021 and November 2024, the Republic’s analysis found. 

Most of the minors who Phoenix police officers pointed guns at were people of color: More than eight out of every 10 times police pointed firearms at a minor during The Republic’s analysis period, the child was Black or Hispanic. 

When asked why kids of color were disproportionately represented in gun point incidents, a police spokesperson said he did not want to “speculate.”   

“I can assure you that every … incident has circumstances specific to that event,” he wrote in an email. 

Justin Nix — one of the researchers who recommended that Phoenix police start tracking gun point incidents in 2019 — said it was likely the result of “place and race-based policing.”     

“Everywhere that we’ve ever studied this, across decades and across different places, different sites, you find … that people of color are overrepresented in areas that are structurally disadvantaged,” Nix said.   

“And so, you know, when the police get called, or when the police go out and try to ‘fight crime,’ they do so in places that are going to set them up to disproportionately come into contact with people of color.” 

Nearly half the times officers have pointed guns at children in Phoenix, they have done so in two police precincts: the Maryvale/Estrella Precinct, which encompasses much of west Phoenix, and the South Mountain Precinct, which covers a wide swath of the south-central and southeast part of the city.     

Both precincts have some of the city’s largest shares of Black and Hispanic residents, according to a Republic analysis of 2023 census estimates.   

How many kids aimed weapons at officers?  

We don’t know for sure. The Phoenix Police Department’s published data doesn’t track whether kids who had a gun pointed at them were armed.  

But half of the times they pointed guns at kids, police didn’t report referring charges to a judge or prosecutor or leveling a civil traffic citation, according to The Republic’s analysis.  

A department spokesperson in an email noted that officer gun points are tracked as “part of administrative reports, not criminal reports.” 

Young people can — and do — commit serious crimes: Incidents of some violent crimes by juveniles increased between 2022 and 2023 in Phoenix, according to the Police Department’s 2024 crime reduction plan.  

A study from the Council on Criminal Justice found a 21% increase in the number of juvenile offenses involving firearms across the nation between 2016 and 2022.     

But that same study found that overall, youth offending in 2022 was 14% lower than it was six years earlier.  

What are effects can facing a police gun can have on kids? 

Facing a police officer’s loaded firearm can constitute a significant traumatic life event for pretty much anyone who experiences it, including children and teens, said Paula McCall, an Arizona-based psychologist and certified Clinical Trauma Professional who has worked extensively with children and adolescents.     

For younger kids ― especially those taught that police officers are there to protect them and are “safe” people to go to — trauma from a gun point incident has the potential to alter their worldview and perception of law enforcement, McCall said.     

“Childhood trauma is very powerful in how we make connections and understandings in the world, right?” McCall said. “If we have something significant that happens in our safety, then the world is not a safe place.”    

Justice Department investigators said in their report that Phoenix police’s “problematic” tactics and “unlawful” conduct can have “particularly harmful consequences for children’s physical and mental wellbeing.”   

What is the DOJ report, and what did it say about gun points? 

Last June, The U.S. Department of Justice released a 126-page report about the Phoenix Police Department – the culmination of a three-year investigation in the agency that looked at how officers use force.  

The report documented multiple instances of Phoenix police officers engaging in discriminatory policing and escalating interactions with youth with “combative language” and “needless force.”  

It includes details of interactions where police officers cursed at children, tackled them, slammed them against various surfaces, used neck restraints and cuffed them so tightly that their wrists bore marks for months.  

A sergeant in the department said Phoenix police officers “don’t really treat youth any differently than adults,” according to the report.  

The Justice Department’s investigation into Phoenix police did not delve deeply into police gun pointing. However, the report notes that supervisors charged with reviewing certain kinds of officer uses of force — including gun-point instances — “fail to scrutinize the force used or the officers’ tactics.”

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