Two Phoenix police officers have been fired and arrested following an unreported traffic stop in which they allegedly assaulted a couple and deployed a Taser.
Officers Antonio Felix and Luis Vasquez, 33 and 32, face charges including aggravated assault, kidnapping and aggravated robbery, Phoenix police chief Matt Giordano announced at a Saturday news conference. The officers were terminated and taken into custody after detectives confirmed they had physically assaulted both a male driver and female passenger during the Aug. 5 stop, Giordano said.
“Detectives have confirmed that the two former officers physically assaulted both the man and woman during the traffic stop,” Giordano said at the briefing. “The investigation also shows that a Taser was used on the victims during the stop.”
The officers failed to report the late-night stop and did not activate their body-worn cameras, leaving no video record of the encounter. “There is no video evidence, but we established what we believe is probable cause that these crimes were committed,” Giordano said. He added that there was no indication the officers knew the victims prior to the incident.
During the stop, the officers smashed the car window, according to a Phoenix police statement. Vasquez punched the male driver and threatened to shoot him, while the female passenger was removed from the vehicle and handcuffed. The man managed to drive away and abandoned the car in neighboring Tempe, while the woman was released at the scene.
A Tempe police officer who responded to the abandoned vehicle asked over dispatch whether it had fled from any neighboring agencies and was told it had not, according to a Tempe police report. That officer then called the car’s registered owner, the mother of the male driver, and through her connected with both the woman passenger and eventually the male driver.
The woman passenger told the Tempe officer that both she and the driver had been shocked with a Taser. The man later told the officer that he had been punched in the face multiple times and that they had repeatedly asked why they had been stopped. The Tempe officer wrote in the report that he believed the couple had been victims of an attempted carjacking by people impersonating police officers.
Giordano said he had a similar reaction when he first learned of the incident, describing it as “so far outside the bounds of our policies.” Detectives initially treated it as a potential impersonation case before the automatic vehicle locator in city vehicles placed a Phoenix police car at the location around the time the victims reported, transitioning the matter to a special investigations detail.
Vasquez and Felix had served eight and nine years with Phoenix police, respectively. Giordano noted both had previously violated department policy, though he did not elaborate and said it was “nothing of this nature.”
Dave Evans, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, said Sunday that Vasquez had been released from custody while Felix remained incarcerated at the Lower Buckeye Jail in Phoenix. Attempts to determine who their defense attorneys were to request comment were unsuccessful.
In the viral moment that sparked the investigation, a late-night traffic stop on Aug. 5 escalated into physical violence against a couple who had no prior connection to the officers involved. The male driver fled to Tempe after being punched and threatened with a gun, while the female passenger was handcuffed and later released at the scene. The officers’ failure to report the stop or activate body cameras meant the case initially appeared to be a police impersonation crime before vehicle locator data tied Phoenix officers to the location.
The Phoenix department’s investigation and audit remain ongoing, and the officers have a scheduled court appearance on Friday.