Posted inPhoenix Politics: Arizona/Phoenix

City Hall

The first and perhaps only great mayor was Greek. He was Pericles of Athens, and he lived some 2500 years ago, and he said, "All things good on this Earth flow into the City, because of the City's greatness." Well, we were great once. Can we not be great again? — from the 1996 film City Hall.

Something strange is happening inside Phoenix City Hall, and I can't escape the nagging feeling that the ouster of police chief Jack Harris is part of it. Harris was removed as chief, but not as public safety director, after claims that the PPD inflated kidnapping numbers in order to get federal grants. Mayor Phil Gordon supported Harris, while Councilwoman Peggy Neely was a vocal Harris critic. That's the story so far, and the reporting has been disappointing. The back story has yet to fully emerge. (Here's a 3/11/11 update on council bickering; this is reaching Scottsdale levels of childishness).

To understand the modern Phoenix Police Department, you must go back to 1954, when Charlie Thomas was appointed chief. He was a rough equivalent of LA's William Parker, a modernizer and reformer who created a professional police force. PPD was never as corrupt or brutal as the LAPD that Parker inherited; it was a small force (149 officers for a city of 150,000) with a good-ole-boy culture in a mobbed-up town. It was still haunted by the 1944 murder of one its first African-American officers, "Star" Johnson, by detective "Frenchy" Navarre. Johnson and his partner were walking a beat in the Deuce when Frenchy, a notoriously brutal and racist cop, parked in a red zone off-duty and refused to move. He shot Johnson, who later died, and was acquitted by a Southern-culture Phoenix jury. Johnson's partner later came into Police Headquarters (on the first floor of the lovely, still-standing City-County Building) and gunned down Frenchy, who went down firing the two guns he wore. The bullet holes were in the walls for years. There was also the infamous World War II riot in "(racial slur) Town by soldiers, a rich historical event for some future scholar.

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Posted inPhoenix

Oh, for a newspaper in Phoenix

Phoenix, the nation's fifth-largest city, hasn't had a newspaper since 2007. I'm not being snarky. The storied, beloved and hated Arizona Republic was replaced by The Information Center. Its owner Gannett was very clear about this when the change was made. Staffers were told over and over: "We're not a newspaper anymore." It shows.

That's too bad, because troubled places, corruption, exploitation of the weak and the crushing of fair play thrive when there's no real newspaper. Wal-Mart quit the despicable practice of taking out insurance policies — payable to the company — on its minimum-wage, part-time workers only when the practice was reported by the Wall Street Journal. Exposing wrongs in a complex world, and explaining that world, usually takes highly trained, highly motivated, intensely curious veteran journalists. Such work can't be done by "crowd-sourcing" or "citizen journalists" or any of the cheap fads publishers have used to get rid of their cranky, higher-paid intellectual capital. Some fine journalists remain at The Information Center, but they are rarely allowed to really follow their calling, especially upon a growing herd of sacred cows.

Oh, for a newspaper in Phoenix. One to write hard-news-put-'em-in-jail investigative journalism. One to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. To report the news and raise hell. To dig through court, government and business records, and cultivate deep, authoritative sources. To illuminate and hold accountable the most dominant institutions. If it existed, I can think of ten major stories to get it started:

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