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Tempe officer resigns after inaction during Antonio Arce incident
Tempe Police Department holding meeting Thursday on improving community trust.
and last updated 2021-04-22 07:55:50-04
TEMPE, AZ â Months after ABC15 learned a Tempe police officer was patrolling an alley minutes before 14-year-old Antonio Arce was killed in January of 2019, Tempe Police confirmed that officer has now resigned from the force.
Officer Alex Pina, a patrol officer with the city of Tempe Police Department for 11 years, submitted a one-sentence letter of resignation to his commanding officer on March 3.
The letter didn t say why the officer chose to leave his role at the department, but Pina didn t just leave the department, he also gave up his Arizona Peace Officer certification.
The killing of a Black man by a Minnesota police officer, captured on cellphone video, led to a racial reckoning in Arizona and across the country. Thousands of people demonstrated for months, demanding criminal justice reform and justice for George Floyd.
After a guilty verdict was returned against the officer Tuesday, defense attorney Jocquese Blackwell reflected on how a jury in 1992 made a different choice. It acquitted officers involved in assault and use of force against Rodney King in Los Angeles even though there was video evidence.
This time, a jury believed in what it saw on video, Blackwell said.
Tempe police responded to a 911 call on Jan. 15, 2019, about a suspected burglary in an alley. Officer Joseph Jaen arrived to find Antonio Arce, sitting in a truck with a handgun.
Jaen called to Arce, 14, who turned and ran. âLet me see your hands!â Jaen yelled, but Arce continued running, and Jaen shot and killed him.
In body camera footage taken minutes after the shots, Jaen can be heard saying âItâs a (expletive deleted) toy gun.â It was, indeed, an airsoft replica of a Colt 1911 pistol, with its orange tip still intact.
âThatâs supposed to alert the public, as well as the police, to the fact that this is not a real gun,â said Daniel Ortega Jr., a lawyer for Arceâs family. Airsoft guns use springs or compressed air to fire nonlethal plastic projectiles.
The successor to Napaâs first minority police chief may be â at least in the near term â the first woman to lead city law enforcement.
Sylvia Macrae Moir, who spent four years as chief of police in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, Arizona before resigning in October, will become interim chief of Napa Police pending an approval vote Tuesday by the City Council. The candidacy of Moir, whose law enforcement career has spanned more than three decades, was disclosed in a council meeting agenda published Thursday morning.
If cleared by the council, the 55-year-old Moir would become Napaâs first-ever female police chief as well as the first openly gay person to hold the position, replacing Robert Plummer, the first Black leader of the force.