Phoenix officer arrests black WSJ reporter after being accused of trespassing. Then city leaps into action and pays a massive $100,000 settlement

Dion Rabouin, who was working as a Wall Street Journal reporter at the time of the incident, has settled a lawsuit for $100,000 after a Phoenix police officer handcuffed and detained him while he was on assignment. According to Atlanta Black Star, the encounter took place on November 23, 2022, outside a Chase bank.

Rabouin was reportedly on the sidewalk interviewing people entering the bank about savings accounts. Bank employees spoke with him, learned he was a reporter, and then called police to have him removed, according to the account of what followed.

Officer Caleb Zimmerman arrived and demanded identification. When Rabouin apparently did not hand it over and said he had broken no law, the officer handcuffed him. Police never charged Rabouin with a crime.

Reporter offered to leave after learning of the trespassing claim

Bodycam video shows Rabouin telling Zimmerman he would leave once he learned someone had accused him of trespassing. The officer still insisted on identifying him first and then arrested him. “Mr. Rabouin offered to leave to walk away, but this officer jumped the gun and was aggressive and started handcuffing him for no reason,” Benjamin Taylor, the attorney representing Rabouin, said.

Zimmerman wrote in his report that a bank employee’s statement gave him probable cause for the arrest. Rabouin told the officer the employees had only asked what he was doing and had not told him to leave. He said he did not know the sidewalk was private property.

Katelyn Parady, a bystander, reportedly started recording the exchange and told Zimmerman the reporter had done nothing wrong. The officer apparently threatened to arrest her as well.

Five days later, Rabouin filed a complaint with the Phoenix Police Department. He claimed the officer used excessive force, detained him unlawfully, and racially profiled him. Investigators cleared Zimmerman of those claims. They did find that he violated the department’s search and seizure policy when he took Rabouin’s wallet from his pocket, which led to a written reprimand and remedial training.

Rabouin sued in November 2024. The suit accused Zimmerman of unlawfully detaining and searching him and accused the bank employee of lying about having asked him to leave. “At no point until then had Rabouin been asked to leave the sidewalk outside the bank by Chase personnel or anyone else,” the lawsuit states.

Bodycam video shows the bank employee, described as a white woman, telling Zimmerman they had asked Rabouin to leave. The officer’s aggressive approach is part of a broader pattern of tense police encounters with Black men, such as when a man in Grosse Pointe started recording as officers approached him for a welfare check.  

Rabouin denied that. The same footage shows him offering to leave right away and saying he had not known the sidewalk was private property. “Instead, Zimmerman escalated the situation and decided to detain Rabouin,” the claim states.

“This lawsuit would never have had to happen if the officer would have had a simple conversation with Mr. Rabouin,” Taylor said. The Phoenix Police Department’s troubles go beyond the DOJ findings, as a Chicago officer knocked out a Black woman’s tooth one day after her $280,000 settlement.  

He also said, “The elephant in the room is the fact that the City of Phoenix Police Department has been investigated by the Department of Justice,” and added, “And the Department of Justice has found that they have racially profiled people and infringed on people’s First Amendment rights.” The Phoenix City Council approved the $100,000 settlement in a 9-0 vote on September 9. The deal lets the city avoid admitting wrongdoing.