PHOENIX — The protesters arrested by the Phoenix Police Department in 2020 on charges that were later dropped are now going after Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel's office in their class-action lawsuit against the city and county.
A group of plaintiffs has filed litigation against local officials after they were arrested in May 2020 during Black Lives Matter protests held in downtown Phoenix in response to the death of George Floyd.
The plaintiffs claim they were illegally arrested and wrongly labeled as rioters. They filed a lawsuit against the City of Phoenix last year and now they're making new allegations against the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
"Until recently, we believed that Phoenix police acted alone in this gross constitutional violation. We recently learned otherwise," lawyers for the plaintiffs recently wrote.
RELATED: 'It's a relief': Charges dismissed for protesters who marched in downtown Phoenix last October
The plaintiffs served a notice of claim this week containing text messages that reveal the inner communications going on among MCAO staff regarding the protesters.
Officials messaged each other during the public demonstrations, updating each other on the protests and counting how many cases they expected to receive, documents show.
"Confident we have multiple submittals also headed (our) way as folks in video get identified by LE," an MCAO official wrote in a message.
MCAO was apparently making contingency plans in case the agency got "too many submittals," the messages appear to show.
Police made about 120 arrests in downtown Phoenix on the same day these messages were exchanged.
The messages were obtained by the plaintiffs by filing a public records request.
Other messages obtained by the plaintiffs show some MCAO staff objecting to prosecuting the protesters for felonies in February 2021.
The agency's communications director, who's recently resigned, expressed her misgivings to Adel about the cases.
"We have grossly overcharged these folks and we need to make it right," the director wrote. "We've charged innocent people w/ crimes they didn't commit."
Adel ended up deciding to dismiss more than a dozen criminal cases against local protesters who had been labeled as gang members.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs believe the internal messages indicate Adel knew more about the protest cases than previously suggested.
"They seem to undermine any suggestion that County Attorney Adel had only a 'snippet' of information about the gang charges, as she would later claim in attempting to distance herself from the scandal," lawyers wrote in their claim.
An MCAO representative did not immediately respond to an inquiry seeking comment.
The scrutiny Adel's office has received for its handling of the protesters has been happening at a time when staff members from within MCAO have been pressuring Adel to resign.
Adel indicated in a letter last month she doesn't intend to step down.
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