Tucson officials provided more details about their evolving approach to public safety at the first meeting of the Safe City Task Force on Friday.
The approach pairs stricter enforcement of drug laws with new resources for treatment while tightening collaboration between local institutions.
The new task force, part of Tucson Mayor Regina Romero’s Safe City Initiative, includes government officials, nonprofit leaders and private sector representatives. Romero told the group she assembled them to help address persistent concerns about public safety in Tucson.
“Crime is going down in our city, but yet, our neighbors, our residents in Tucson are still tangibly seeing the crisis of unsheltered homelessness and the public health crisis of fentanyl and opioid misuse,” Romero said.
According to Tucson Police Department statistics, overall crime increased from 2023 to 2024, but was still lower than pre-pandemic highs. It is on track to decrease in 2025. Larceny is the largest category of crimes tracked by the department.
In Romero’s telling, the city has been “doing a lot of work” on addressing homelessness and drug use, but has hit a wall with people who refuse city services.
“We haven’t been able to find solutions for the hard-to-serve, for the chronically unsheltered members of our community,” she said.
Romero said the task force can help the city find solutions to reach those people. Organizations represented on the task force range from the Pima County Attorney’s Office and Old Pueblo Community Services to the Cactus Empire Little League and QuikTrip.
In recent weeks, city officials have struck a firmer tone on public safety, stressing the need to hold criminal behavior accountable, devoting significant meeting time to public safety topics and deploying more police to homeless encampments.
Solutions may include public drug use misdemeanor ordinance, detox facility##
Speaking to reporters Friday, Romero singled out a proposed city ordinance prohibiting public drug use as a measure she’d like the task force to review.
The Tucson City Council already discussed the legislation introduced by Ward 4 council member Nikki Lee in September, but tabled it for 60 days. The ordinance is returning for another discussion at a Tuesday council meeting.
“While state law prohibits possession of controlled substances, those cases are felonies that fall under the jurisdiction of the Pima County Attorney. In practice, small-scale possession and public use often go unprosecuted,” Lee wrote in a memo introducing her ordinance.
During the council’s September discussion of Lee's ordinance, Tucson Chief of Police Chad Kasmar said about 65% of the fentanyl possession cases his department brings to the Pima County Attorney go unprosecuted.
Creating a city misdemeanor for drug possession or use would give the Tucson City Court more control over drug cases, whether they’re prosecuted by the Pima County Attorney or not.
It would let the city give users a choice between jail and treatment, said City Manager Tim Thomure. Specifically, the city hopes to offer users a bed in the sobering center planned for an unused county jail building known as the Mission Annex.
Pima County is contracting with the addiction treatment provider Community Bridges to operate the center, which is set to have 15 beds and is currently funded by $1.86 million in opioid settlement funds.
Thomure said a public drug use misdemeanor could also address the perception that Tucson police officers don’t enforce drug law, which he said stems from decisions made by the Pima County Attorney’s Office.
“As a police officer in the field, when you know a case will go to city court and there’s going to be a process with it, you have confidence in doing it,” he said.
“If you don’t have confidence on the back end that the prosecutors will do something with it, you’re going to use your time differently in the field,” he said.
The Pima County Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment Monday. It is represented on the Safe City Task Force.
The Tucson City Council and the Pima County Board of Supervisors are scheduled to meet jointly on Tuesday to discuss solutions to unsheltered homelessness and fentanyl use.
Romero said she was optimistic for the meeting and called on the city and county to “hold hands” in appealing to the state and federal government for potential support.
