Tucson Crime Free’s 2024 Year in Review

--- Sign up for TCFC newsletter by entering your email at bottom of page.

As we embark on 2025, let’s look book at what TCFC accomplished in 2024, reflect on the state of Tucson, and plan for a better 2025.

TCFC 2024 in review:

• TCFC partnered with The Goldwater Institute to advocate for Proposition 312, help shepherd it through the legislature, educate voters on the importance of holding the municipalities accountable when they refuse to enforce law, and maintain basic public safety, thus allowing rampant lawlessness to destroy our community.

 

• Starting now, business and property owners can demand reimbursement from the City of Tucson and Pima County in the form of a property tax refund for expenses caused by property crime. Voters in Pima County overwhelmingly voted for Prop 312 thanks to the hard work of TCFC.  To the City of Tucson: we have pierced the invincibility you have benefited from through your use of city-wide ward voting, low voter participation rates, off cycle propositions, uncompetitive primaries, and strangleholds on your electorate. The City of Tucson will be held to account for its failed policies and mismanagement.

Start your Prop 312 filing here:

https://azdor.gov/individuals/proposition-312-arizona-property-tax-reimbursement-non-enforcement-public-nuisance-laws

 

TRANSITION CENTER

• TCFC is extremely proud to be the lead advocate for the Pima County Transition Center and to have played a role in its launch. With the support of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and under the leadership of County Administration (Jan Lesher, Steve Holmes) and Justice Services (Kate Vesley, Doyle Morrison), the results are in and the TC is a huge success.

 

• The recidivism rate of individuals who use the Transition Center’s services shows a drop from 27% to less than 10%, saving taxpayers $940,000 in the first year. The Transition Center provides connects those in need to services through referrals to shelter services, drug treatment, and other social services to those released from jail. TCFC continues to advocate for social service infrastructure to get these facing substance use disorder the help they need.

• TCFC endorsed multiple primary and general election candidates for public office. Some of our candidates won and others lost. What was groundbreaking was that we made some previously noncompetitive races competitive and forced multiple incumbents to run defensive campaigns in what would have otherwise been an easy victory. Ms. Conover can thank TCFC for causing the most expensive county attorney’s race in Pima County history. We will continue to develop candidates and support candidates who support our mission: prioritizing public safety to improve our communities and restore prosperity to all.

 

• “Say No to Panhandling Signs” Record numbers of Pima County citizens have requested the expansion of our sign program. The signs are an educational tool. Panhandling will stop when drivers stop providing money. To the City of Tucson-your obstructionist refusal to implement the same sign program using fundamentally flawed legal logic will be used against you as evidence in court when our members begin suing for property tax refunds using Prop 312. 

• Our membership now exceeds 8,000 members of our community! We are the fastest growing non-profit and civic organization in the history of Southern Arizona. In 2024, we hosted dozens of meetings, met over 20 political candidates, attended dozens of public safety meetings, testified at the State Capital multiple times, and partnered with countless professional organizations from business groups to labor unions!

 

• In 2025, we will seek to expand our membership and increase our engagement with our members and the community. 

Current Action Items:

Update to Title 36 Legislation

Last legislative cycle TCFC is proud to have worked with Senator Wadsack as well as Representative Hernandez on SB1578. This bill was an update to Title 36. Although it passed the Senate, it stalled out in the House. TCFC will be running a new iteration of this bill in the current cycle.

Opposition to Proposition 414

TCFC is strongly opposed to Proposition 414. As advocates for adequate staffing and resources for law enforcement as well as treatment and support services for those in need, we are unable to support this proposition as presented. On the surface it has aspects that might look attractive to voters. The reality is when reviewing the actual policy it is simply a regressive tax with no real oversight that will end up being a City of Tucson slush fund. Prop 414 will be voted on March 11th. We will continue to educate voters in coming newsletters.

Listen to Mayor Romero openly admit she can’t run the City of Tucson without the help of the Federal Government sending her money on the Bill Buckmaster show:

https://www.buckmastershow.com/2025/01/09/buckmaster-show-1-9-2025-mayor-romero-talks-about-2025-priorities-for-the-city-of-tucson/

Read the Truth in Taxation on Prop 414. In the City of Tucson’s words, they have created this prop for maximum flexibility allowing them time to shift funding. This is the most important document to read.

https://www.tucsonaz.gov/files/sharedassets/public/v/1/government/documents/resolution_23838-signed.pdf

Read the entire proposition here:

https://www.tucsonaz.gov/Government/Office-of-the-City-Manager/Proposition-414

 

Buckle Up its about to get Rough

 

The Sorry State of Tucson:

• The City of Tucson:
  • Homicides in Tucson increased 25% in 2024 compared to 2023. Homicides in Phoenix declined 35% over the same period. Most cities across the country from New York City to Washington DC to Detroit to San Francisco to Baltimore saw significant declines in homicides. Not so in Tucson.

• • Other noteworthy statistics from the City of Tucson:
    • Aggravated assaults- up 6.7%
    • Robbery- up 7.2%
    • Larceny (property theft)- up 4% (most of which continues to be underreported)
    • Grand theft auto up- 2,889 vehicles were stolen in 2024, almost 8 vehicles were stolen per day.

• • Pedestrian deaths in Pima County increased 23% in 2024 compared to 2023. 79% of those pedestrians tested positive for narcotics. The impact of fentanyl, methamphetamine and other narcotics can be seen at your nearest intersection.

• • The City of Tucson is darker than ever thanks to the widespread theft of copper from city streetlights. First it was our water backflows, now it’s the City’s streetlights. In the past 6 months, 445,000 linear feet of copper wire has been stolen from streetlights resulting in a cost of $1.3M and to the serious detriment of public safety. Add 1,000 dark streetlights to the list of the City’s failures including its inability to pave/maintain its roads despite multiple sales tax increases and its crumbling and dangerously maintained city owned affordable housing stock. Predicting the future, expect an announcement from Mayor Romero to begin deploying solar powered streetlights to obfuscate the City’s failures.    

 

(TCFC Steering Leader Kevin Daly Interviewed on copper wire theft. Source KVOA)

Quick Fact: Tucson has a poverty rate of 14.4%.

Under the leadership of Mayor and Council, Tucson is becoming poorer on a relative basis:

• Population growth from 2020 to 2023: 0.8% in the City of Tucson compared to 2.6% in Phoenix. This is especially poignant when it takes so much more population growth to make a meaningful statistical difference in Phoenix, with a population nearly 3x larger than that of Tucson. Most of the growth in Maricopa County is of course happening outside of the City of Phoenix. Mesa will soon overtake Tucson as the second largest city in Arizona, further undercutting statewide investment in Tucson and Pima County.

 

• The City of Tucson’s population growth and median household income growth woefully lag behind Pima County, Arizona, and the entire country:

 

Source:  University of Arizona

https://www.azeconomy.org/2024/11/demographics-census/tucson-then-and-now-what-has-changed-over-75-years/

 

• • Mayor & Council continue to advocate and implement policies that further marginalize the already marginalized, stunt economic mobility, and sow the seeds of entrenched poverty:
    • Under years of fare free bus transit (at an annual cost of estimated $13 - $15 million in lost fare revenue) simply look at the results. The busses and bus stops are riddled with crime. Virtually every bus stop resembles a scene out of the living dead. Where the bus goes, crime and mayhem follow. Simply look at ridership on the Free Crime Bus:
      • 2018 Ridership (pre-COVID): 15,204,419 rides
      • 2023 Ridership (2024 #s haven’t been released): 14,615,275 rides

Talk about a failed policy. The City of Tucson instituted free fares and ridership declined! Bus drivers are afraid to drive the bus while hard-working citizens and students are fearful to ride the bus. Mayor Romero- your failure to recognize what is plainly obvious is “ludicrous.”

WORTH THE WATCH - Mayor Romero reacts to crime on the bus "LUDICROUS!":

https://youtu.be/sFRlifOSzlk

• • Mayor & Council continue to play word games to describe homeless drug addicts. First, they were “unhoused neighbors”. No, Mayor and Council- a neighbor doesn’t defecate and urinate on your porch, steal your packages, siphon your water, break into your vehicle or home or leave drug paraphernalia strewn through your yard. Santa Rita Park and other parks are not overtaken by “neighbors”. They are overtaken by homeless drug addicts at the expense of the citizens and families who wish to use the parks for their intended purpose as parks. How many children will drown in the future because they couldn’t learn to swim because the City can’t safely operate swimming pools? Having belatedly recognized the impact of these “unhoused neighbors,” Mayor & Council Members began calling these same people the “walking wounded.”

 

• • Santa Rita Park Case Study:
    • Santa Rita Park (among other parks) is simply a disaster. It is unusable to anyone in the community who desires to use the park as a park. 
    • The park was closed in late September to “preserve public health, safety, and welfare” according to the City of Tucson. This is also a de-facto admission by the City of the situation it allowed to spiral out of control:
    • What did the City find in its cleanup?
      • A dead dog
      • Hundreds of needles and other drug paraphernalia
      • Copious amounts of human excrement
      • Of the approximately 50 individuals who remained in the park despite repeated notices to vacate, how many accepted services for housing and drug treatment and mental health services including but not limited to low barrier housing (allowing pets, etc)? None- not one person.
      • The Mayor’s response: “My question has always been where do we take these individuals that obviously need help?” Ms. Mayor- clearly your lack of enforcement of law and permissiveness to destruction and chaos has created an untenable situation in which these addicts will pursue their drug fueled lifestyle at the expense of our entire community.
      • Council Member Lane Santa Cruz responded to the Santa Rita Park situation by stating: ““We have been allowing for these park spaces to get out of control, [we] turn a blind eye until it gets out of control, then we come and do enforcement with an iron fist. We need to know what kind of path we are forging.” Ms. Santa Cruz, you are correct in that the City has been turning a blind eye and correct in that you need to know what path you are forging but clearly there is no viable path forward. Where you are incorrect is that cleaning the park and allowing those very same people to re-inhabit the park hours later is hardly “an enforcement action”.
      • If the City can’t control its own parks- how can citizens expect it to manage the rest of the City?
  • The City of Tucson continues to push an ill-fated effort to build more affordable housing to reduce homelessness. The homeless of Tucson have proven in Santa Rita Park and countless other cases that they don’t want housing. They simply want to be left alone to self-medicate themselves using illegal narcotics at the expense of our community. These are not people who work and can’t afford housing- they are drug addicts who don’t live by the rules of society and commit crimes in their pursuit of drugs. 
  • Why should the City of Tucson be trusted to building additional housing when its existing house stock is mismanaged, dangerous, and derelict?
  • Drug addicts need drug treatment:
    • The City of Tucson fails to recognize how to combat the fentanyl crisis. It’s declaration of a “Fentanyl Emergency” has led to no tangible results on the street. The City has no health related infrastructure and does NOT have a health department. Constructing buildings to house addicts using federal funding without treatment is a disaster in the making.
    • Rather than having any real infrastructure to combat drug abuse, the City has a “The Community Safety, Health & Wellness Program” staffed with 7 employees and 1 intern. In other words, the City department tasked with this monumental task is staffed with the same number of employees as your neighborhood Dominos.
    • The Pima County Health Department has undertaken a major initiative to distribute Narcan through the community. Opioid deaths in 2024 decreased by 27% from 2023 for three primary reasons:
      • The dosage of fentanyl has become more consistent as the cartels have improved quality control. Dead customers are bad for business.
      • As the fentanyl crisis has matured, a high proportion of users are more experienced in fentanyl consumption and better at avoiding fatal overdoses.
      • Narcan is distributed and administered in increasing numbers and what would have been fatal overdoses are becoming non-fatal overdoses. Saving lives is good! Data on non-fatal overdoses is hard to quantity and most cases are unreported.
    • Even with its decrease in fatal opioid overdoses, Pima County continues to lead the state of Arizona on per capita basis overdoses excluding sparsely populated rural counties. Progress is being made but more needs to be done quicker to save lives.

Bringing Transparency to Tucson and Pima County politics:

• Pima County is the overlooked ugly stepchild of both political parties. It is the backwater to Maricopa County. As Maricopa grows in population and Pima County’s influence continues to dwindle, we will seek to bring transparency to Pima County politics. TCFC, a non-partisan, non-profit advocacy organization.
  • Going forward we will continue to bring transparency to the political parties.
  • For example, it was highly inappropriate and likely illegal for Sheriff Nanos to publicly suspend his opponent in the Sheriff’s race, Lieutenant Lappin, weeks before the election. Pima County is not a banana republic, and the Sheriff needs to be held to account. Elections need to be fair.
  • Mayor Romero was elected by less than 10% of Tucson’s overall population. Her policies reflect not the consensus and priorities of average Tucsonans but are driven by radical activists. TCFC will seek to build broad based support in the community so that future leadership will be reflect the wishes of or our community.
  • In an off-cycle City proposition vote in 2023, a very slim majority of City voters approved salary raises for Mayor and Council. The Mayor’s salary increased from $42,000 to $95,750, which exceeds the salary for Governor Hobbs. Council member’s pay increased from $24,000 to $96,600 in 2024. Now that our “public servants” are making nearly the double Tucson’s median household income of $48,058, we demand performance! In a city and region where finding a job that pays nearly $100k is out of reach for most, we optimistically hope we can replace our poor performing elected leaders with better qualified candidates!
  • The local government infrastructure from the top to the bottom is broken. We are going to begin bringing transparency to judges and the Pima County Attorney for failures to protect the public including these two recent outrageous examples:
    • The Pima County Attorney under Deputy County Attorney Brad Terrace recommended holding an illegal immigrant without any ties to the US who was allegedly caught transporting 70 lbs of fentanyl ($500k of street value) for sale to be held on a $100k bond. WE NEED JUDGE’s NAME! Bail should not have been allowed under A.R.S. § 13-3961(A).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6zgwJH9C34

• • • In yet another shocking case, a known drug dealer already released on probation was arrested by the SWAT team after a vehicle chase was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon (e.g. shooting someone), unlawful discharge of a firearm, misconduct involving weapons, unlawful flight, and property damage. Deputy Pima County Attorney Ryan Gant requested 100k bail stating that the suspect is a “a continual risk to the community” and that a $100k bond should be imposed as the suspect had not yet been placed on a probation hold (i.e. remanded to custody). The judge granted a 100k bond. To the judge and Pima County Attorney- how about simply remand to custody known drug dealers who violate their parole, shoot people, and then send the police in a wild chase?  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwQHPOj9mNw

• • We will continue to file formal public information requests to bring greater public awareness to government failures impacting our members.

 

We’re committed to improving our community. We need all hands-on deck. If you’re interested in assisting us with expertise or time or donating funds to help with our administrative costs and political activities, please reach-out. We thank you for your support and together, we will make a difference.

More to Come!  Cheers to 2025.

To contact:  monica@tucsoncrimefree.com