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Stephen Phil Franco

Age : 37

Gender : Male

Race : White

Date : 09/29/2021

Location : Mesa Police Department; Tempe Police Department

City : Tempe

County : Maricopa

State : Arizona

Agency : Mesa Police Department

Officer(s) :Not Disclosed

Cause of Death : Gunshot

Event : Killed by police during arrest

OPEN RECORDS SUMMARY :

On 09/29/2021, four Mesa Police Department officers shot and killed 37-year-old Stephen Phil Franco at an apartment complex at 202 E. Baseline Road in Tempe while attempting to arrest him in connection with a bank robbery two days earlier.
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Mesa detectives had tracked Franco to the apartment complex after identifying him as the person they believed robbed a Desert Financial Credit Union at 1262 N. Stapley Drive in Mesa on September 27. Detectives located Franco inside a parked vehicle and attempted to arrest him.
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According to police, Franco would not leave the vehicle. Tempe police spokesperson Hector Encinas said officers asked Franco whether he was armed and Franco indicated that he was, leading Mesa police to treat the encounter as a barricade. Mesa SWAT officers responded and attempted to negotiate with him.
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When negotiations did not bring Franco out, police escalated to less-lethal weapons. Officers fired beanbag rounds and deployed a chemical agent into the vehicle. The chemical agent caused Franco to exit and walk toward the rear of the car. Police continued firing beanbag rounds, which they said did not stop him, and Tempe police deployed a K-9.
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Police alleged that Franco then lowered a hand toward his waistband as though reaching for a firearm. Four Mesa officers opened fire, striking him. Franco was transported to a hospital and died. Police reported finding a handgun on the ground near the location where Franco had been standing. Early reporting specifically noted that investigators had not yet established publicly whether the recovered gun belonged to Franco.
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The available accounts therefore establish an important distinction in the shooting narrative: police did not report seeing Franco holding or firing a gun immediately before officers opened fire. Their stated justification was that he moved his hand toward his waistband after previously indicating that he was armed. The handgun was reported recovered from the ground after the shooting.
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Tempe Police Department investigated the shooting because Mesa officers fired the fatal shots in Tempe. Mesa police separately continued the underlying bank-robbery investigation.
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An important transparency issue emerged after Franco's death. None of the Mesa SWAT officers involved in the encounter were wearing body cameras. ABC15 subsequently reported that this was not an isolated omission: Mesa's SWAT and Street Crimes Unit officers had historically operated without body-worn cameras. The department had been questioned about the practice after earlier controversial shootings and nevertheless still had not equipped SWAT officers with cameras when Franco was killed. Mesa subsequently said all SWAT and Street Crimes Unit personnel would receive body cameras by the end of 2021.
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Available later reporting does not document Franco's family or an eyewitness publicly challenging the police account of his final movements or an encounter-related wrongful-death or civil-rights lawsuit.
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OFFICER BACKGROUND
Four Mesa Police Department officers fired at Franco. Their identities were not disclosed in the contemporary reporting and could not be reliably established from later publicly accessible coverage reviewed for this update.
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The Mesa Police Department had a substantial and directly relevant record of controversial force incidents when its SWAT officers killed Franco. Just one year earlier, on September 25, 2020, Mesa officers shot and killed 21-year-old Angel Benitez after surrounding his vehicle at another Tempe apartment complex. Police alleged Benitez reached toward his waistband, but he was unarmed. Witnesses said Benitez had his hands raised. His family filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit alleging wrongful death and excessive force.
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The similarity between the Benitez and Franco shootings is notable. Both involved Mesa specialty-unit officers confronting men inside vehicles at Tempe apartment complexes; in both cases police alleged a movement toward the waistband immediately before officers fired. The Benitez shooting became particularly controversial because witnesses said his hands were raised and police subsequently determined that he had no gun.
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Mesa SWAT was also sued over another 2020 encounter in which officers fired beanbag rounds at Lorenzo Jones while video showed him standing with his hands raised near his children. Jones was unarmed. These cases led ABC15 investigators to examine a broader pattern of Mesa specialty-unit force and to discover that neither SWAT nor the Street Crimes Unit routinely wore body cameras.
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The department's force controversies extended considerably further. Mesa Officer Philip Brailsford shot and killed Daniel Shaver in a hotel hallway in 2016 while Shaver was unarmed, crying, pleading with police not to shoot him and attempting to follow officers' commands. Brailsford was prosecuted for murder and acquitted, while the killing became one of Mesa's most nationally prominent police controversies.
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In another widely publicized case, multiple Mesa officers repeatedly struck Robert Johnson in 2018 while he was standing against a wall and was not physically resisting. Surveillance video contradicted important elements of the officers' initial descriptions of the encounter. Mesa ultimately disciplined officers, and Johnson's federal civil-rights case resulted in a $350,000 settlement.
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Mesa also faced a $15 million legal claim following the 2020 killing of Angel Benitez, alleging excessive force, failure to provide adequate medical assistance and negligent hiring. By the time Franco was killed, the department was therefore already confronting litigation and sustained public scrutiny over multiple incidents involving force against people who were unarmed or allegedly had their hands raised.
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The lack of body-camera footage in Franco's shooting is especially consequential against that history. Mesa had already been questioned about why officers in its SWAT and Street Crimes units were exempt from routine body-camera use after previous disputed shootings. Nevertheless, when four SWAT officers killed Franco in September 2021, there was again no body-camera recording from the officers who fired. The department changed that practice afterward.

SOURCE LINKS :

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/tempe/a-shooting-involving-mesa-police-in-tempe-under-investigation-police-say
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/bank-robbery-suspect-shot-killed-in-tempe-by-police-authorities-say
https://patch.com/arizona/tempe/mesa-police-shoot-kill-man-tempe-apartment-complex
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2021/10/02/mesa-police-officers-shoot-bank-robber-reaching-for-a-gun/
https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/mesa-faces-lawsuits-for-officers-using-force-on-hands-up-suspects
https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/15-million-claim-filed-against-mesa-police-for-shooting-unarmed-man
https://www.abc15.com/news/crime/lawsuit-mesa-officers-unlawfully-arrested-shot-unarmed-man-in-the-butt
https://www.abc15.com/news/local-news/investigations/officers-pinned-mesa-man-in-2018-as-he-begged-for-help
https://www.abc15.com/news/region-southeast-valley/mesa/religious-leaders-list-demands-for-mesa-police-following-excessive-force-report