Two Phoenix police officers arrested and fired after violent, unreported traffic stop

Phoenix Police Department Disbands a Traffic Stop That Turned Into an Assault

Healfromzero.com – Two veteran officers with the Phoenix Police Department lost their badges and ended up behind bars after a late-night traffic stop on August 5 that was never logged in any department record, never captured on body cameras, and left two civilians with broken windows, punched faces, and Taser burns. Chief Matt Giordano confirmed the firings and arrests at a Saturday press briefing, laying out a sequence of events he described as falling well beyond anything the department’s policies contemplate.

Charges and Custody Status

Officers Antonio Felix and Luis Vasquez face charges that include aggravated assault and kidnapping. Giordano stated plainly that detectives confirmed both former officers physically assaulted the male driver and the female passenger during the stop, and that a Taser was deployed on the victims. Neither officer filed a report for the encounter, and neither activated the body-worn camera that Phoenix police require for traffic stops. The absence of video did not stall the investigation.

“There is no video evidence, but we established what we believe is probable cause that these crimes were committed,” Giordano said.

Giordano added that nothing in the file suggested the officers had prior knowledge of the two victims. As of Sunday, Vasquez had been released from custody while Felix remained held at the Lower Buckeye Jail in Phoenix. Dave Evans, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, confirmed the split custody status. Efforts to identify and reach the officers’ defense attorneys for comment did not succeed.

What Happened During the Stop

According to a Phoenix police statement, the male driver and his female passenger described a chaotic late-night encounter in which the officers shattered the car’s window. Vasquez struck the man and told him he would be shot. The woman was pulled from the vehicle and placed in handcuffs. The man ultimately managed to drive the car out of the scene and left it parked in neighboring Tempe, while the woman was set free at the original stop location.

The discovery of the abandoned vehicle set off a chain of events that brought the incident to light. A Tempe police officer who responded to the parked car radioed dispatch to ask whether the vehicle had fled from any nearby agency. The answer was no. The Tempe officer then called the registered owner of the car — the male driver’s mother — who relayed the call to the woman passenger and, eventually, to the man himself.

The woman told the Tempe officer that both she and her companion had been shocked with a Taser. The man later described being punched in the face multiple times and said the pair had repeatedly asked the officers why they had been pulled over. The Tempe officer recorded in his report that he believed the two were victims of an attempted carjacking carried out by individuals posing as police.

How the Investigation Unfolded

Giordano said his first reaction upon hearing the account mirrored what the Tempe officer had written: disbelief. He called the episode

“so far outside the bounds of our policies.”

Once detectives began pulling threads, they recognized that Phoenix-licensed officers could be connected to the scene. The case was handed to the department’s special investigations detail. Investigators then assembled corroborating evidence, including data from the city’s automatic vehicle locator system, which placed a department vehicle at the location roughly when the victims said the encounter took place.

“That’s when they started putting evidence together, including the automatic vehicle locator that did put a vehicle at that location about the time that the victims reported it occurred,” Giordano explained.

Background on the Officers and Department Context

Vasquez had served eight years with Phoenix police; Felix had nine. Giordano noted, without further elaboration, that both had prior policy violations on their records but characterized those as

“nothing of this nature.”

The incident lands in a national conversation about police accountability that has intensified since the early 2020s. Traffic stops remain one of the most common points of contact between American drivers and law enforcement, and departments across the country have moved to mandate body-worn cameras, standardized reporting, and independent oversight precisely because unreported or poorly documented stops can become the site of unchecked force. Phoenix’s own policy framework requires that every traffic stop be logged and that cameras be activated; the fact that neither requirement was met here made the investigation reliant on witness testimony, dispatch records, and vehicle-locator data rather than the video that would ordinarily settle questions of what transpired.

The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the Lower Buckeye Jail where Felix was held, handles booking and custody logistics for county-wide detainees, including former city officers charged with felonies. The split in custody between the two officers — one released, one still incarcerated — suggests differing bail determinations or charging timelines, though neither Giordano nor Evans elaborated on the distinction.

What Comes Next

The Phoenix department’s internal investigation and audit remain open. A court date has been set for Friday, where the two former officers will appear before a judge on the aggravated assault and kidnapping counts. Until that hearing and the department’s audit conclude, the full administrative and criminal picture of the August 5 stop will continue to develop.