Assaulted AZ Cop “Almost Unrecognizable” After Attack, Union President Says

Sunday night a Phoenix, AZ, police officer was injured when he was assaulted by a suspect at the scene of a domestic violence call. The local police union reports the officer’s injuries are more severe than originally reported.

Michael Sullivan, interim Phoenix police chief, released a statement saying, “a Phoenix police patrol officer was violently assaulted by a domestic violence suspect and sustained significant facial injuries requiring hospitalization and surgery.”

Phoenix Law Enforcement Association President Darrell Kriplean provided details of the severity of the injuries sustained by the officer.

A statement from the association says the officer responded to a domestic violence call and was attacked while trying to take the suspect into custody. The suspect struck the officer in the face, rendering him unconscious, and then continued to hit him in the face an estimated dozen times. He also stomped on the officer’s face.

The suspect fled but was apprehended by other officers.

“Because of the vanilla media release by the police department, media reports have said our officer was hospitalized with serious but non-fatal injuries, but that doesn’t begin to convey the brutality of the attack,” says Kriplean in the statement. “The officer’s injuries are horrific; two broken eye orbital bones, lacerations on the head and above the eye, and a broken nose. He was almost unrecognizable only minutes after the assault. It’s nothing short of miraculous that he survived.”