The man leaning against the wall of the Tempe City Council Chambers watched the woman in the blue sleeveless shirt make her way down the aisle. Just moments earlier the woman had given a public comment to the council. There needs to be civilian oversight of the police department, she told the elected officials seated in a semi-circle in front of her. The police can’t investigate themselves.
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“I’m outraged. I’m saddened and so frustrated that charges are still being pursued,” she finished. “I urge the city to drop the charges against Eryn Bonner and to remove the officers involved.”
As she ducked into one of the last rows to find her seat, the man against the wall, Eryn Bonner’s father, caught her eye.
“Thank you,” he mouthed.
The speaker was one of many people who took to the podium at Tempe’s Aug. 31 city council meeting to show their support for Eryn Bonner, a 20-year-old ASU cheerleader who was punched in the face by a Tempe police officer during an arrest on Mill Avenue in July. Bonner faces possible misdemeanor charges stemming the arrest, footage of which was posted online by a bystander. The public’s support came as the Bonner family, through their attorney Benjamin Taylor, called for an independent review of the incident rather than an internal investigation by the Tempe Police Department.
In a letter emailed Thursday last week, Taylor asked the Tempe City Council and Mayor Corey Woods to demand that the police department reassign the investigation to an outside agency. The sentiment echoed that of many of the speakers at the meeting: officers shouldn’t investigate themselves.
“They play baseball together. They hang out together at the precinct. They go to lunches together,” Taylor said in an interview with Phoenix New Times the morning after the meeting.
The letter also demanded the removal of a sergeant assigned to the internal investigation because of his personal discipline history: Sergeant Kevin Ameiss. According to previous reporting, Ameiss was disciplined in 2020 after an officer he supervised held a Black hotel employee at gun point who did not match the description of the white suspect he was looking for.
“It’s like icing on the cake,” Taylor said about the sergeant’s involvement in the internal investigation.
Phoenix New Times reached out directly to Woods and the city’s six council members for comment. Pat Shannahan, a public information officer for the city, told New Times in an email that they would not be commenting because of the ongoing investigation and the possible litigation. He also said that the city couldn’t comment on the status of Bonner’s charges. The department considers disciplinary records when making assignments, Shannahan wrote. Ameiss was disciplined in 2020 for his actions as a supervisor.
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“He was not disciplined for his actions during the specific incident referenced in the letter,” he wrote.
In a statement sent on behalf of the city, Shannahan wrote that the city “takes the integrity of its internal investigations seriously.” The investigation is ongoing and goes through multiple levels of scrutiny.
“Internal investigations are not conducted in a vacuum or based on the assessment of a single investigator,” he wrote.
Taylor sent the letter after Ameiss reached out to Bonner to interview her and other witnesses.
“This assignment presents an egregious conflict of interest and severely undermines public trust in the Tempe Police Department’s accountability processes,” he wrote to the mayor and the council.
Not everyone agreed with the sentiment that the officers acted improperly.
“On the rare occasions we use force, we do so to protect the public, protect ourselves, and to end the threat as we face quickly and non-violently as we can,” said Tempe Officers Association Rob Ferraro during the meeting’s public comment. “The false narrative that Tempe police are running amok is a convenient lie that, if allowed to fester, will destroy public safety in the city, and the consequences will extend far beyond the police department.”
The city has other ways to review the incident that would not raise as many questions about its integrity, Taylor told New Times. It could work with another department or even the state attorney general’s office. But as is, the investigation appears compromised.
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“If Tempe can’t see that and understand that, they have a big problem,” he said.