COUNCIL COMMUNICATOR, September 8, 2026

TEMPE TRUTH, ANONYMOUS ACTIVISM AND THE CAMPAIGN TO DESTABILIZE TEMPE

A message to Mayor Corey Woods and the Tempe City Council:

There is a point at which alleged constructive criticism stops being constructive and instead becomes a targeted attack.

Tempe passed that point a long time ago.

The anonymous Sept. 7th broadside from Tempe Truth is presented as an analysis of the Police Department’s credibility. It is nothing of the sort. It is the latest installment in a sustained political effort by a small number of anti-Tempe activists who have decided that anyone standing between them and what they want must be discredited, humiliated or driven from public life.

Their targets are familiar: Mayor Corey Woods. City Manager Rosa Inchausti. Police Chief Kenneth McCoy. Tempe Officers Association President Sgt. Rob “Greg” Ferraro. And anyone else who refuses to endorse their version of events.

The September 7 letter is a useful example of how the operation works.

First, gather every accusation made against the Police Department over a period of many years – including long before McCoy was Chief of Police and Inchausti was city manager. Second, erase the distinction between allegations and proven facts. Third, connect incidents that have different people, different circumstances and different outcomes. Fourth, assign the most sinister possible motive to everyone involved. Finally, declare the resulting compilation a “pattern” and insist that anyone who questions the conclusion is part of the corruption.

That is how the letter can cite a complaint as proof of retaliation, a settlement as proof of guilt, an internal investigation as proof of a cover-up and a union president doing his job as proof that Sgt. Ferraro is somehow Chief McCoy’s “fixer.”

It is a closed loop. There is no evidence capable of disproving the accusation because any contrary evidence is simply redefined as evidence of the conspiracy.

That should trouble every member of this Council. So should their reliance on anonymity.

AN IRONY TO CONSIDER

Our organization, Tempe Residents United for Safety Together (TRUST) is also anonymous.

We do not conceal that fact. We selected this structure for two reasons.

First, TRUST demonstrates how easily an organization such as Tempe Truth can be created. It takes less than an hour, a small amount of money, an email address, a logo and basic familiarity with artificial intelligence to establish an official-sounding organization and begin issuing polished public statements.

AI can produce dramatic prose, repeated rhetorical patterns and confident institutional language. It can make a document appear authoritative.

It cannot establish that the document’s conclusions are true.

Our second reason for remaining anonymous is more practical: Opposing Tempe Truth comes with a predictable price.

Anyone who challenges its narrative can expect vicious personal attacks from a millionaire landlord, a frothing City Council troll, a sitting state senator and their pals. Their method is not persuasion. It is intimidation: Identify the dissenter, attack the dissenter and make the cost of speaking publicly high enough that everyone else stays quiet.

Why volunteer to become the next target of their rage when anonymity allows residents to protect themselves and tell the truth unfettered?

We will not pretend this pressure does not exist. And we will not surrender the debate to the people most willing to abuse anyone who disagrees with them.

There is, however, an important difference between TRUST and Tempe Truth.

We acknowledge our anonymity and invite the Council to judge our words against the evidence. Tempe Truth uses anonymity as a cloak while attaching real names to sweeping accusations of racism, corruption, retaliation, abuse and institutional failure.

It demands accountability from everyone but itself.

EXAMINE THE FACTS

The latest Tempe Truth letter is not an investigation – not even close. It is political propaganda, a public prosecution written by people who have already decided the verdict.

Consider what this letter actually does.

It invokes the Brady process as though placement on a disclosure list automatically proves that an officer is dishonest, racist or incapable of performing any police function. It asserts that another officer “should be” on that list without identifying any legal finding supporting that conclusion.

It repeats contested allegations involving Jalen Woods, Rashidi Johnson, Latasha Hampton, Anthony Chiaro and others as though no factual dispute exists. It takes complicated incidents involving different people, different circumstances and different legal questions and presents them as interchangeable proof of one sweeping conspiracy.

It declares that Sergeant Ameiss is investigating the Eryn Bonner incident when he is assisting Tempe’s Professional Standards Bureau, not independently deciding its outcome. It then uses a previous incident involving Ameiss to argue that the Bonner review must already be corrupt – before that review is complete.

It even attacks Sgt. Ferraro for publicly providing context regarding the Bonner incident. Apparently, the activists who rushed to condemn an officer before the investigation was complete believe only their side should be permitted to speak.

Most revealingly, the letter offers virtually no source material that would allow Council or the public to evaluate its claims. There are no footnotes. No links to investigative findings. No court rulings establishing its accusations. No serious effort to distinguish an allegation from a proven fact.

There is only inflammatory language: “corrupt,” “weaponized,” “racially gerrymandered,” “institutional failure” and “existential crisis.”

Those words are designed to produce anger, not understanding.

THEN COME THE DEMANDS …

The authors use the anger they have manufactured to demand sweeping investigations, the removal of personnel and a complete restructuring of police oversight. Their reasoning is circular: Tempe cannot be trusted because these activists say it cannot be trusted, and their accusations must be true because Tempe cannot be trusted to dispute them.

The letter demands an “independent” investigation after already declaring the Police Chief corrupt, the City Manager complicit, Internal Affairs weaponized, union leadership discredited and the Police Department institutionally guilty.

That is not a request for fact-finding. It is a demand that the City ratify a predetermined conclusion.

That is not how evidence works.

If Tempe Truth wants to make the case that the Tempe Police Department has “lost all credibility,” it must prove that case. It cannot simply cite every accusation ever made against TPD, declare each accusation true and then use its own declarations as corroboration for the next accusation.

That is circular reasoning masquerading as research.

And the authors have constructed an argument that can never be disproved. If Tempe investigates itself, the investigation is corrupt. If an allegation is not sustained, that proves the Department protects its own. If discipline occurs, that proves the Department was corrupt. If the City settles litigation, that proves guilt. If officials defend themselves, that proves they are part of the cover-up.

Heads, Tempe Truth wins. Tails, Tempe loses.

THIS IS ABOUT SOMETHING BIGGER 

None of this is happening in a vacuum.

On November 3, Tempe voters will decide Proposition 424. Does anyone seriously doubt that many of the same people spending their days attacking City Hall and the Police Department are also organizing against a ballot measure its proponents say will protect public safety from millions of dollars in state legislative budget cuts while also expanding early childhood education and supporting local transit?

Of course they are.

The objective is larger than one police incident, one investigation, one city employee or one anonymous letter. The objective is to convince residents that nothing in Tempe can be trusted – not the Police Department, not the City Manager, not the Mayor, not the Council, not the people who represent police officers, not the City’s finances and not the individuals and organizations who say Tempe needs resources to maintain services.

Destroy trust in the institution and every future attack becomes easier.

That is why the Council should understand what it is looking at.

This is rule by grudge and grievance. The people behind it have accumulated years of grudges against City Hall, elected officials, police leaders and public employees. Their answer to losing an argument is another accusation. Their answer to a fact they dislike is another conspiracy. Their answer to an investigation that does not produce the result they demand is to declare the investigator corrupt.

And their end goal is destabilization: throw so much sh*t against the walls of City Hall and the Tempe Police Department that eventually something is bound to stick.

Councilmembers should not confuse repeating the same allegations at top volume over and over with credibility.

Tempe should investigate legitimate allegations. It should discipline misconduct. It should improve policies when improvement is warranted. That is what a responsible government does.

A responsible government also recognizes an organized political attack when it sees one.

Mayor Woods, City Manager Inchausti, Chief McCoy and Sgt. Ferraro should not be expected to prove their innocence every time anonymous activists assemble another dossier of recycled allegations. Nor should the Council allow a handful of people hiding behind an organizational name to dictate the public narrative simply because they are willing to attack more often, more loudly and more viciously than everyone else.

The Council should not reward this tactic.

Do not confuse relentless repetition with community consensus.

Tempe Truth speaks for the small group that created it. It does not speak for Tempe.

Accountability matters. So does fairness. So does the principle that public servants deserve to have the facts established before their names are dragged through an AI-generated prosecution disguised as civic engagement.

Tempe Truth demands that everyone else prove their credibility.

It is time someone demanded the same of Tempe Truth.

ANONYMOUS DOES NOT MEAN CREDIBLE. EVIDENCE DOES.

JUDGE THE FACTS. REJECT THE INTIMIDATION. STAND WITH TEMPE.

Respectfully,

Tempe TRUST
Tempe Residents United for Safety Together