Tempe councilmembers Bobby Nichols and Brooke St. George condemned how the cops handled a fight on Mill Avenue.

Of course they posted it on Facebook. Everything about this happened on Facebook: the bystander video went viral there, and the union answered there. Hard to disagree when city leadership says, “Every single member of our community deserves safety,” and then points out that the officers are long on violence and short on cool heads.

Here’s what they’re talking about. Around one a.m. on July 19, officers waded into a fight on the Ave. A 21-year-old named Eryn Bonner tried to pull them off a man. She got put on the ground twice. She and an officer went over a bike. Then an officer punched her in the face. Tempe booked her on two felonies: aggravated assault on a first responder and resisting arrest. The county attorney declined to prosecute.

I drive that street. Bar close on Mill is real. Pour a thousand people out of a dozen doors inside twenty minutes, most of them young, many of them drunk, and you have a volatile mix. Fights happen. They have always happened. Getting through one without putting a fist in a 21-year-old’s face is not an unreasonable ask. It should be the job.

In my time on the Ave, across Tempe, and out in the rest of Phoenix, I can tell you without a doubt that the culture of policing we’ve allowed leads straight here. Every time.

If nobody says anything, it keeps going. The people on the receiving end are the ones with the least to fall back on: minorities, the unhoused, and everyday people who only wanted to get where they were going. Bullies pick the ones who can’t hit back. Same instinct here, better equipment.

Of course, the Tempe Officers Association called the comments “irresponsible.” I’d prefer reporters stopped calling these people for quotes. The input is unhelpful and frequently unhinged.

Police associations want more power and less oversight, and they have never once been talked out of that position by evidence. Until one of them surprises me by saying an officer got it wrong, I’ll file their statements where they belong. All monsoon, no rain. Shut up, the adults are talking.

Phoenix-area police have a long history of behaving badly and then treating the complaint as the offense. In 2024 it took the Justice Department to say out loud what the street already knew: a pattern of civil rights violations and excessive violence directed against Black, Latino, and Native people. And the first federal finding anywhere that a department was violating the rights of the homeless.

That’s Phoenix. Tempe, my home base, keeps grinding on its unhoused population. Last year, a former Tempe police commander accused city leadership of misusing a confidential law enforcement database to track homeless advocates. Peoria PD ran the investigation and closed it as unfounded. No evidence of misuse. Worth noting they closed it without interviewing the commander who raised it.

I’m not going to tell you a thing happened that investigators say didn’t. I’ll only say the city has given me no reason to assume the best of it, given how long it’s displayed extremely poor thinking about homelessness and about dealing with the street compassionately.

I know Nichols and St. George are new to the council. I don’t care.

Being new doesn’t make them wrong. If anything, it’s the qualification. They were regular people in this city eight weeks ago; they remember what an officer looks like from the sidewalk. Time in a council seat doesn’t change that. If anything, it pulls people away from the street.

The people elect the Tempe City Council. They speak with our voice. Two people who have seen what happens on our streets and want to make a change got our go-ahead to say so in a building where it counts.

Which earns them the cheers of the people who put them there, and our criticism in whatever measure seems appropriate. Today it’s cheers. They used the seat to stand up for somebody who couldn’t.

Photo: Pixabay