Officer Frank Oviedo pulled up next to the parking lot of a Speedy Cash on the corner of Grant and Alvernon. Five people sat cross-legged on the asphalt, the youngest crying as officers asked basic questions and wrote their names on white notepads.
“You’re driving around looking for instances where people can be contacted, like ‘oh, this person might be trespassing’ or ‘this person looks like they’re using drugs,’ and then you stop,” Oviedo said.
The five were being arrested for trespassing and drug paraphernalia possession during one of the city’s monthly Safe City deployments on Feb. 25 — an initiative city leaders say is meant to link people to help, but where enforcement remains a central tool.
An officer already at the scene explained to a man on the sidewalk — who said his wife and son were among the detained — that they were not allowed to loiter in the parking lot, even if they were waiting for the bus.
“If you’re waiting for the bus, that’s fine. But you have to do it at the bus stop, right?” Officer Adrian Harrison said. The detained woman handed her husband the dog as he asked officers where he could pick her up.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do for the rest of the day,” Harrison said.
“No, I’m just asking you, where can I go to pick her up?” the man pleaded. Harrison eventually told him to head near the McDonald’s on Alvernon and Speedway. The man walked down the street, dog in tow, to wait for his wife and son’s release.
After processing the five, officers transported them to a nearby Dairy Queen parking lot — the operation’s temporary headquarters — where, alongside police officers, 13 organizations and a video court were set up.
Though branded under the “Safe City” initiative launched in October 2025 by the city, some forms of these types of integrated resource-enforcement operations have been happening for nearly four years, said Justin Hamilton, the city’s multi-agency resource coordinator. In this approach, enforcement is combined with services, which he said makes people more likely to accept help.
“There is not one hole we can’t fill here,” Hamilton said. Earlier in the day, another man was arrested, had his initial hearing in the parking lot and later left with Community Medical Services for a medication-assisted treatment program.
On a typical trip with the city’s outreach team, Hamilton said, only about one in 10 people accepts help. But during these integrated deployments, the success rate is much higher. On a recent, smaller deployment, he said, 21 out of 35 people accepted assistance.
While connecting people to services is the stated emphasis, arrests remain a primary strategy. Arizona Luminaria observed eight arrests; all were charged with trespassing, possession of drug paraphernalia or both.
Those arrested are taken to a van in the parking lot, where Judge Jeffrey Klotz appears by video for their initial court appearance. There, the judge reviews the charges and decides whether the person can attend community court the following Friday.
“At community court, the judge has a lot more ability to either dismiss charges if they’re willing to get help,” Lt. Brian Corcoran said. “If somebody’s not willing to go to the community court, then they would have to go through the regular city court, and then that’s a little bit more punitive.”
Most are released shortly after their video court appearance.
Through the regular court process, a person could end up in jail — though, he said, that is unlikely for trespassing or drug paraphernalia charges. Missing a court date can trigger a warrant and potential jail time, turning even a low-level citation into high stakes.
Keith Bentele, an associate research professor at the University of Arizona who studies homelessness, says deflection programs in which officers have discretion at the point of contact for lower-level crimes, offering resources or transportation to treatment instead of arrest have shown benefits.
“Folks who were deflected as opposed to arrested had better outcomes in terms of their mental health,” he said. “We also looked at housing stability and a bunch of other outcomes, but generally the pattern was the same.”
However in safe city deployments people are still being arrested, increasing their interactions with the criminal justice system.
“I hear the argument from the local government that, you know, this is an effort to connect vulnerable people with resources,” he said. “But this is, I would say, a very undesirable mechanism to use law enforcement to try to connect people to treatment. And generally the literature on addiction and recovery is very clear that coercive mechanisms are often, I would say, the least successful amongst a wide range of options.”
He added that recent policies and initiatives further criminalizing homelessness place people in difficult positions. While individuals may ultimately have their charges dismissed, they still enter the system.
“If people are going to community courts and they are not being incarcerated, that is harm reduction, that’s good, I support that,” he said. “But this is like an additional level of surveillance and targeting of people which is layering on top of a lot of targeting that has already been happening in terms of disrupting encampments.”
Bentele said that vulnerable people, particularly those who are unhoused, often face complex challenges beyond substance use disorder. He also said the city lacks sufficient resources to serve the unhoused community.
“We can only serve like a fraction of the people that need support who are experiencing homelessness on a good day. And again, that’s not TPD’s problem. That’s a homeless response system problem, which is underfunded by all levels of government, especially the federal government,” he said.
Mayor Romero visited the deployment near the end of the day and watched three individuals arrested in an alley for trespassing. She said it was difficult to witness because people are facing complex challenges that require multiple resources.
“The goal is not to incarcerate but to get them the resources that they need, and the resources that we have are not enough,” she said.
Even so, the city has recently passed ordinances criminalizing camping in washes and standing in medians, creating “more avenues to be able to use the law to connect them to the resources that they need,” Romero said, adding that accountability is also part of the approach.
“We need to make sure that there’s accountability and that there’s a mechanism to compel individuals to use the resources that are available to them,” she said.
South Tucson is grappling with many of the same issues — but through volunteer-led neighborhood walks that focus on outreach and resource-sharing rather than police deployment.
The new ordinances have not led to an uptick in apprehensions, Hamilton said, but they provide another enforcement tool.
Kazue Coon, a community impact specialist with Community Medical Services, was present at Wednesday’s deployment. “Flying a sign is harder these days because of the median law, and they are getting tickets for trespassing and for violating that law,” she said.
She said she conducts outreach daily, but Safe City operations offer a broader network of services.
“It allows us to work with the city and OPCS (Old Pueblo Community Services) and the Transition Center — we all work together outside of these operations — but here there are a lot more resources, so we can work together to provide whole-person care,” she said.
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