Tucson police made more than 800 drug-related arrests in the first quarter of this year — a 67% increase compared to the same period over the past three years — as Mayor Regina Romero and the city council received their first update on the Safe City Initiative, an effort to address public drug use, transit safety and homelessness.
“Safe City is the umbrella of all the efforts that we’re doing to really address the challenges we have around shelter, the fentanyl public health crisis, and the violent crimes and things that are happening in our city,” Assistant City Manager Liz Morales said, opening the presentation.
The initiative covers three areas: public drug use enforcement and pathways to treatment; transit safety and security action plan; and housing and homelessness emergency.
Tucson Police Department Chief Monica Prieto said they’ve made over 700 arrests for felony and misdemeanor drug offenses, not including paraphernalia, in the first quarter of the current year, totaling 806.
“It just tells us that the opioid crisis continues to be an issue,” Prieto said, adding that officers are making more arrests with the same number of staff.
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Ward 4 council member Nikki Lee lauded Prieto, saying she sees the increase in arrests as evidence that law enforcement officers are working hard to respond to community concerns. Lee previously brought forth the idea of exploring a city-level ordinance to criminalize public drug use.
Lee had said the ordinance was meant to address a gap left by the Pima County Attorney’s Office not prosecuting many low volume drug possession charges.
“We made a pivot to strengthening the existing tools and put the ordinance on the backburner,” Lee said. “There were some folks that were very relieved, but there were equal parts people that were really concerned that we were abandoning the work. So, I’m really grateful to hear this update today.”
Prieto said they’ve also made 149 deflections, or instances in which individuals are offered social services instead of arrests, and 53 referrals to the new Sobering Alternative for Recovery center.
Keith Bentele, an associate research professor at the University of Arizona who studies homelessness, says deflection programs 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.”
Prieto reported that they continue their safe city deployments, working with nonprofit organizations and other departments to connect people with resources while using arrests as a leveraging tool.
These differ from pure deflection as 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,” Bentele 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.”
Transportation safety
Deputy Director of Transportation and Mobility, Andy Bemis, gave an update on the transit safety and security action plan which was approved in December of 2025. The plan included 31 immediate actions, including developing shared data reporting standards; formalizing meetings between TPD, Sun Tran, and contracted security; and creating a dashboard for transit-related security incidents. Bemis said 29 are complete or in progress.
“I look forward to sharing those dashboards at a future meeting,” Bemis said.
He also said TPD just began special duty deployments.
“There are two groups of two officers working Monday, Wednesday, Friday from noon to 6 p.m. on five priority corridors,” Bemis said. He added that the dashboards are intended to help modify those deployments as needed.
Funded with $350,000 of a one-time allocation of $500,000, the deployments started on March 9 and through March 30, have resulted in 69 arrests, 139 warnings and nine referrals for services.
The remaining $150,000 is set aside for “environmental improvements” such as adding lighting or rock landscaping “to try and discourage some of the problematic behavior.” Bemis said eight locations have seen investment with more to come.
“We’re working through the list of priority stops right now to continue those improvements,” he said.
With the passage of RTANext, Bemis said there are further funds available to allocate for more work.
“There is $51 million over 20 years included in that plan for transit safety and security improvements so that’s about $2.5 million a year. A large sum of which is expected to come to the city of Tucson for improvements on the Sun Transit system,” he said.
Housing and homelessness
Ann Chanecka, director of housing and community development presented on the housing portion of the safe city initiative, specifically the department’s efforts to develop a process for the Planning and Development Services Department to approve temporary use permits for safe outdoor spaces and safe parking sites in the city. These sites provide space for people to set up camp or live in their vehicles while experiencing homelessness.
“For a safe outdoor space, you’re all familiar with Star Village. So, that is the model for a safe outdoor space where tents or enclosures are used to connect the unhouse to services and provide a level of safety,” Chanecka said. “Safe parking sites are similar, however, they are for unhoused who have vehicles, whether that’s a car or a small recreational vehicle — and also connecting them to connecting unhoused families to services.”
The draft policy limits safe outdoor spaces to either 30 tents or 50 people, and sets the same capacity for safe parking sites — allowing up to 50 vehicles instead of tents. There are other requirements ranging from staffing numbers to a monitoring and safety plan. Chanecka said the policy includes waivers so that the permits are accessible, even if all conditions aren’t met.
“If a small nonprofit or a faith-based group feels that they can provide a level of safety and security, but they can’t meet one of their requirements or some of their requirements, there is a process to request a waiver for those,” she said. “Overall, with the site requirements, we’re really trying to balance different needs here. We want to ensure the clients who are unhoused have a level of safety.”
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