The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (MCBOS) unanimously approved a $6 million payout on Wednesday to Antifa and BLM protesters who were arrested and prosecuted for violence after the death of George Floyd during a riot in downtown Phoenix in 2020. After ABC-15 ran a series of videos critical of how law enforcement handled the protesters, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) dropped the charges, prompting a lawsuit by the protesters against the county and the City of Phoenix. The chief prosecutor on the case, April Sponsel, was fired and suspended from the practice of law for two years.
Retired FBI Special Agent James E. Egelston of Baseline Investigations prepared a 161-page report for Maricopa County in June 2023 regarding the actions of Sponsel and the Phoenix Police officers involved. He stated, “During the march, protesters walked in the streets, blocked traffic, knocked over and dragged construction barricades into traffic lanes, threw smoke bombs in the path of police, repeatedly ignored commands from the police, and resisted arrest. One of the protesters was armed with a loaded rifle and a loaded handgun. Another protester carried a brick in a backpack.”
The activists’ complaint, which was filed in July 2021, alleged, “Throughout the summer and fall of 2020, prosecutors at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office colluded with officers in the Phoenix Police Department to surveil, target, unlawfully arrest, and maliciously prosecute well-known racial justice activists in an effort to suppress the First Amendment rights of activists critical of law enforcement and to intimidate, disrupt, silence, and ultimately, incapacitate the local Movement for Black Lives.”
Much of MCAO’s decision to drop the charges appears to have come down to quibbling over whether the Antifa and BLM protesters technically constituted a “gang” or not. Antifa, which was referred to as ACAB by law enforcement (Antifa describes itself using that acronym, which means All Cops Are B****rds), was not found in the law enforcement database, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety later refused to classify the protesters as gang members. A gang does not need to be listed in the database in order to bring gang charges, but MCAO decided after the fact that due to this technicality, felony gang charges should not have been brought.
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