Phoenix spreading new type of police line

They were high-profile confrontations that provoked headlines, protest marches, lawsuits, task forces and calls for all-citizen police review boards.

Edward Mallet, 25, an African American double amputee, died in 1994 after being placed in a chokehold while resisting arrest. Rudy Buchanan Jr., 22, was killed in 1995 when he aimed a shotgun at officers who fired 89 times. Julio Valerio, 16, died in November when he raised a kitchen knife and lunged at six officers who pulled their triggers 25 times.

Through it all, the Phoenix Police Department has rejected criticism from enraged minority leaders and relatives of the victims and has defended the use of deadly force in these cases by saying it was necessary to protect the lives of the officers and others.

No surprise there.

But in a response that has alarmed even some of its supporters, the department has launched countermeasures to improve its image and, as one police official put it, “get our side of the story out.”

Under a new marketing bureau, the police department aims to balance press coverage that it believes too often highlights distraught relatives and neighbors, outraged minority activists--and the alleged mistakes of officers involved in violent confrontations.

Now, said Connie Tyler, the department’s administrator of public information, “people will no longer have to rely on the media to pose questions for them--or on community activists who are just loud.”

The department is doing this, added Tyler, to have a system in place for “telling the true story” when the next controversial police shooting occurs and to publicize “what’s working--the positives.”

The new system has received mixed reviews in this city of 1.3 million people, where relations between police and residents of the barrio neighborhoods southwest of downtown are strained.

Here’s how it will work in the next crisis:

The 3,000-member department has created a sort of “truth squad” trained to disseminate “the facts” door-to-door in areas of high-profile incidents--before reporters arrive at the scene, Tyler said.

In addition, key authorities plan to convene immediately after a crisis to construct what Tyler called “a well-thought-out press release,” and to be grilled by officers “playing at being activists or reporters in mock news conferences so that they won’t be blindsided by certain questions later.”

Then the police chief--flanked by two public relations officers--will address the issue on a radio talk show called “Cop Talk” that airs every Wednesday afternoon.

Traditional press conferences will remain an important part of the post-crisis picture. But the police department will no longer rely on them to publicize details of volatile situations.

And a “Phoenix P.D.” cable television program is in the works.

Never mind that some minority leaders already are referring to the radio program unveiled April 2 as “cop spin.” Or that station managers concede that their midday listening audience is predominately 35 to 64 years of age, upper middle-class and white.

“There’s a lot of misinformation being given out by activists using the media to get their portion of a given story out,” police department spokesman Mike Torres said. “We feel there’s no reason the department can’t be a news provider too--without editors, time elements or five-second sound bites to worry about.”

The Rev. Oscar Tillman of the Arizona branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People warned that the police department’s public relations effort “could backfire.”

“For one thing, the average blue-collar and semi-skilled workers are hard at work in that time frame, so they won’t hear the radio talk show message,” he said. “For another, the police will only continue to build their myth of it being an ‘us vs. them’ world.

“Black and Chicano radio stations might say, ‘If you want to know the real story, listen to us, not them,’ ” he said.

Rudy Buchanan Sr., 47, an antigang project leader whose son was gunned down when he leveled a shotgun at 13 officers in a housing project, worries that the police effort “will make it harder than ever to get a fair jury around here.”

Buchanan, who has filed a $10-million lawsuit against the police department and the city, is leading a campaign to get an initiative on the September ballot calling for an all-civilian police review board with investigative and subpoena powers.

Edward Escobar, who heads the Chicano Studies Department at Arizona State University, predicted civil liability problems for police authorities who generate pretrial publicity.

“I can’t imagine city managers allowing the police to tell the truth if it compromises the city in civil litigation,” he said. “It’s a fine and dandy system of diffusing potentially dangerous situations that can start riots.

“But what is needed,” he said, “is accountability--not a more effective means of getting the police line out.”

Police department spokesman Mike McCullough said these critics miss the point.

“After Mallet, critics said we needed more training; we did that. After Buchanan, they said we had to review tactics; did that. After Valerio, they said we needed more bean bag shotguns; we got them,” McCullough said.

“We’re not afraid of criticism; we want negative calls so that we can deal with problems,” he said. “This effort is a way of doing that and getting our point across. After all, there will be another controversial incident.”