Tucson recorded a 19.5% drop in gun-related homicides last year, city officials told the Mayor and Council during a study session Tuesday, crediting early success from the Safe City Initiative’s coordinated violence prevention efforts.
Officials said the decline reflects a coordinated strategy combining community intervention, centralized investigations and hospital-based outreach aimed at interrupting cycles of violence.
Assistant City Manager Liz Morales framed the strategy as a deliberate shift away from siloed responses. “Gun violence is not inevitable,” Morales said. “Cities like ours that invest in coordinated evidence-based strategies do see results.”
“I know that many of us have some sort of story in terms of gun violence done to our family or friends or people that we know,” Mayor Regina Romero said. She requested an update on the Safe City Initiative in honor of national Gun Violence Survivors week.
Romero announced the launch of Safe City Initiative in October, described as “Tucson’s commitment to addressing unsheltered homelessness, the opioid public health crisis, violent crime, and improving quality of life for Tucson residents,” in Tuesday’s meeting memo.
Oscar Medina, the city’s first violence prevention and intervention program manager, reported that outreach teams reached 899 residents across four Violence Interruption and Vitalization Action, or VIVA, neighborhoods last year through canvassing, resource fairs, community cleanups, and safety workshops. The Office of Violence Prevention and Intervention is developing a multi-year roadmap through 2030 that will align with the city’s Safe City Initiative and Prosperity Initiative.
He added they also work with city departments, local organizations and others to coordinate actions in the city. “These priorities are guiding the community enrichment coordinators in the field as they bring resources and develop programs for residents in the VIVA communities,” Medina said
The four VIVA sites were chosen based on data indicating areas with the highest gun violence and crime incidents. Medina said the site at Grant and Dodge saw an 80% drop in violent crime after two years, with a sustained 50% reduction continuing into 2025. There were more than 400 total arrests there in 2025, 26 involved a firearm.
Assistant Police Chief Diana Duffy gave an update on the police department’s role in violence reduction. In addition to the department’s involvement in VIVA locations, she said they’ve centralized non-fatal shooting investigations and expanded the crime gun intelligence unit.
“All of Southern Arizona is communicating about gun crimes because they don’t stop at certain streets, they don’t stop in the city, they go into the county and so we really enhance those efforts,” she explained.
As a result, she said they’ve seen improvements such as a 15% reduction in non-fatal shootings and an 84% solve rate in non-fatal shooting cases in 2025.
The police department has also partnered with Goodwill’s The Village program along with Banner UMC Level One Trauma Center to be the state’s first hospital-linked violence intervention program.
“They [Goodwill] took a chance on partnering with TPD, which probably wasn’t popular back then [2024], and then really worked hard to get UMC on board,” Duffy said.
In the program, the hospital calls Goodwill in for bedside counseling with stabbing and shooting victims ages 12-24 to connect them with resources. Since May 2025, the program has had hundreds of referrals and de-escalated three known retaliatory incidents. Courts have recently begun referring participants as well.
The information flow between police and Goodwill is deliberately one-directional: TPD refers individuals but receives no feedback on their participation, a design intended to build trust with participants who may be wary of law enforcement.
Duffy said more than 250 people are working with the program.
“They’re engaged in either education, workforce development, health, or other sort of training with Goodwill,” she said.
Another major stride came with the police department’s data keeping and launching of the gun crime dashboard, which incorporates demographic data into firearm related crimes throughout the city.
“I think it’s important to point out that half of the victims are 18-36, 15% of them are African-American, 50% of them are Hispanic/Latino, and 80% of the victims are men,” Duffy said. “We definitely have some work on our hands when it comes to these demographics. Some are not proportional and that’s really what Goodwill works with is generational trauma, generational any sort of issues.”
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