Agents' shootings escape scrutiny, use-of-force reforms

PHOENIX (AP) — First came the crash, reverberating off the walls of the retirement community like a “mini atom bomb,” then a barrage of gunfire shattered the desert morning calm.

Neighbors working in their garages and gardens scrambled for cover, as rounds ripped through metal and cut into picnic tables. One woman hit the floor of her bedroom and called 911. Nearby schools and daycare centers worried if they should go on lockdown.

“It was a war zone,” said Frank Guy, who was in his yard in the Ahwatukee Foothills neighborhood when the shooting started. “I haven’t heard that much rapid fire in that short of a period of time since I was in Vietnam 50 years ago.”

Federal agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a division of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were pursuing a suspected human smuggler they’d been tracking for days. In three unmarked pickups, four plainclothes members of HSI’s Special Response Team followed the suspect’s SUV as it exited Interstate 10 south of Phoenix, took an unexpected turn and headed into a neighborhood of neat stucco homes and walking trails.

As the convoy barreled through the community, the agents decided to conduct a high-risk maneuver intended to force the SUV to stop. Instead, within seconds, an HSI pickup lay atop a downed tree halfway through a garden block wall, the driver of the SUV was dead from multiple gunshots, and her four passengers, including the alleged smuggler and a teenage girl, were wounded or injured.

The April 11, 2019, shootout in Ahwatukee, although extreme, was not an isolated incident. Since 2011, there have been at least 13 shootings involving HSI agents – most of them in 2018-19, according to an investigation by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Reporters found media reports on other HSI-involved...