TCFC Welcomes GEM SHOW Visitors to "Especially DARK Tucson"
The Tucson Crime Free Coalition Welcomes Gem Show Visitors to Especially Dark Tucson
Anyone driving through the City of Tucson will notice an acceleration of streetlight outages due to copper theft. It’s just the latest example of city disfunction. Last year, 227 pedestrians fatally struck within the City of Tucson, 32 fatally. The majority of these collisions did not occur in walkways. 79% of pedestrians killed in Pima County tested positive for narcotics. We strongly encourage visitors to exercise extreme caution while driving in Tucson at night. To Visitors Renting Cars: Take the Full Coverage!
Many of you have complained to us about vagrants setting warming fires. To put it frankly, we share your pain. This weekend vagrants set a fire in an alleyway adjacent to the Navajo Wish and set TEP electrical equipment on fire in the process. Our very own steering leader, Monica Carlson was directly impacted as her business lost power over the weekend. The economic damage? Numerous employees of her business lost income as they were unable to work without electric and the expense incurred by TEP is over $30,000. Who pays for that? Every TEP customer!
We hereby request that TEP start divulging the expense of vandalism!!! The burden should not fall on TEP customers but by the City of Tucson. What’s ironic is that the City of Tucson, a municipality that has proven woefully unable to manage its own roads, streetlighting, parks, or housing could manage or be even tangentially involved in running its own electric utility!
https://azluminaria.org/2025/01/24/tucson-explores-public-power-amid-rising-costs-and-climate-pressure/
Speaking of warming fires, we are hopeful that the warming fires do not lead to horrific damage seen in the LA fires. It’s not as if Tucson doesn’t have dry conditions, brush, and high winds. Nearly two years later after vandals set fire to a playground at Estevan Park is remains damaged and fenced off!
Most recent photo taken January 25, 2025
The City of Tucson continues to promote Proposition 414
Tucson finally admits it has a public safety problem and its response is too little too late! The city needs to recognize that the $2.3B budget it passed this summer is fundamentally flawed. It allocated less than 10% of its budget to the police department, $215M in total, and over half of the budget, $115M is allocated to paying down pension fund obligations. In other words, the reason why TPD doesn’t respond to your 911 calls is that half of its meager budget is spent on extremely poor financial planning and budgeting.
When the budget was adopted, Council Member Paul Cunningham wrote:
“Council Member Paul Cunningham said. “We’ve squirreled some away so that we can continue to sustain the service delivery we’ve adopted. And that’s why, for me … this is one of the best budgets you guys have ever put together.”
Are any of our members happy with “service delivery” Tucson has adopted? How could anyone reasonably think that a half percent increase in sales tax will solve anything?
TCFC demands an alternative! The City of Tucson should immediately revise its budget pursuant to A.R.S. §42-17103 and reallocate funding in a more responsible way!
Why does Tucson have so many problems that shouldn’t exist? As I see it, here’s the root cause: It’s because totally inept people vote for inept candidates to represent them or there’s ballet rigging or most likely both.
This newsletter is still poorly written, comments are unsubstantiated, and you depend on sensationalism rather than fact to appeal to your readers. You often fail to cite sources, and skew data to argue your week case by avoiding presenting facts that do not support your views. If you plan on continuing to post some of this drivel, at least get a writer or journalist to proofread.
Gem show visitors are not concerned with a lack of streetlights, and blaming the city for wire theft is ridiculous.
What is a “warming fire”? It’s either arson, criminal damage, illegal burning, reckless burning, open burning and the City Code. Is this a term used to justify only sending out TPD and TFD and not arresting or holding the arsonist responsible? Are they getting arrested? Cited? Fined? Forced to clean up and restore the land burned? Try this in the National Forest. This is a tremendous expense.
Copper: Is this only about copper? This particular business, alluded to in the newsletter, was shut down. Will it reopen? What else can be shut down? Hospitals? Emergency locations such as police depts. fire depts, communication networks, jails, etc. Isn’t there a tremendous amount of damage that can be done?
We have smart meters on our homes, right? Can’t they shut down our electricity from an office some where? Well, don’t they have sensors in the lines that let them know when a “break” occurs? If someone depending on a pump or other life sustaining equipment dies from this garbage, well, let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
Calling this “warming fires” and talking and social working these copper thieves is going to end up in some big time lawsuits.
Fires and emergency comm breakdowns, compounding the damage caused by the fires-that’s where we’re headed. It’s so clear that real law enforcement, not social engineering, will solve all these problems.
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