Question to candidates: What do you think are the main challenges the Tucson Police Department is facing right now? How should the City Council help TPD overcome them?
Mayor
Arthur Kerschen
Shoplifting and homeless tent camps are major challenges for Tucson. TPD can correct these issues by strict enforcement of existing law.
Regina Romero
As Mayor, I have been committed to our public safety team, especially our Tucson Police Department. Our police officers have seen historic wage increases worth over $15 million dollars. In terms of staffing, we approved 100 positions for commissioned officers and 50 additional positions for Community Service Officers (CSOs).
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I have also worked to expand benefits, including bringing the plan to Mayor and Council to create a childcare facility specifically to meet the needs of those working as First Responders. It is important to me that those working as First Responders have access to the support they need. I will continue to advocate for funding to support the mental and physical health of those serving.
I have worked closely with City leadership and our Public Safety team to work innovatively to put the right work in the right hands. I believe it is important to shift the burden of every 911 call away from the shoulders of police officers. I have worked to support the Transform 911 program, even attending their conference in New Orleans with our public safety leadership to learn and to share what we are doing here in Tucson.
One of the significant challenges the Tucson Police Department and police departments across our country are facing right now are the parallel challenges of recruitment and retention. This is despite a historic wage increase and significant investments in their pensions that the Mayor and Council have approved to ensure the wages of TPD officers.
Janet "JL" Wittenbraker
On the most basic level, increased staffing, improved morale, and community support. The City of Tucson Mayor and Council must support the Tucson Police Department and encourage community policing. Beyond the basics and in order to answer this question properly, additional information, including law enforcement and constituent feedback, is needed.
Ed Ackerley
STAFFING. Tucson Police needs 1,000 police officers by 2025. These office lines are in the budget; more needs to be done in recruiting, marketing, and filling open jobs.
Each Council Meeting should rest on metrics of how many officers are deployable in our city — this should be a priority of all council meetings to get back to the levels of the 1990s staffing numbers.
Ward 1
Victoria Lem
Victoria Lem did not respond to our questionnaire.
Miguel Ortega
Residents deserve to feel safe in their homes, schools and streets. Once elected, I will partner with TPD to continue exploring ways to strengthen community policing strategies and programs. We should study best practice models that partner with agencies that address mental illness and addiction and do all we can to shift that important work to social workers when there is no immediate danger. Like all city employees, police department officials should be both held accountable and be supported.
Every city is — or should be — recognizing that we need to reimagine how police departments and better partner with residents to improve trust and policing practices. But that means that our police department should be properly funded in order to continue to do their important daily work and strive to evolve along with police departments across the nation. The Tucson Fire Department should also be supported and properly funded. They play a vital role in the safety of our residents, and much of their work overlaps with TPD work. We must continue to engage in studies that project what the growing need will be for TFD as climate change becomes a bigger factor.
Lane Santa Cruz
The trend for years in Tucson and across the country has been to expect police officers to not only act as first responders but also to function as social workers, medical practitioners, therapists, marriage counselors and more. We need to more responsibly divide the work that it takes to ensure public safety in our communities. The City has recognized the fact that not every situation requires an armed officer response. We can do this through continuing to expand the 311 system, building out Community Safety, Health and Wellness teams and investing in mental and behavioral health services.
Ward 2
Paul Cunningham
Staffing — We have a great group of men and women in uniform, but we just don’t have enough of them. I’ve called for a study session to talk about some ideas to increase recruiting, like covering health insurance for retired officers who want to come back to work part-time, offering hiring bonuses for officers who live in the city, cross-training school safety officers and sheriff’s deputies for enhanced CSO abilities.
Lisa Nutt
Personally, I see both a morale and a personnel problem. First, on the morale side, TPD has struggled to maintain the aspiration status it enjoyed years ago. I want to see Tucson not only invest in better pay, better training and better working conditions for our officers but also fulfill that commitment on a consistent basis. We have about half the number of officers we need to ensure our citizens are protected. To make matters worse, our training is clearly something we need to invest in to protect our officers and ensure our communities, homes and businesses are respected and safeguarded. On the human resources side, we have far too few officers (275 total officers patrolling our streets) for a city of our size that is part of a metro area of over 1M people. That’s simply unacceptable.
If we want to prosper as a community, we need to make our public safety better in all aspects, beginning with valuing our law enforcement and supporting them in the indispensable service they provide our community while maintaining utmost public trust.
Ernie Shack
Ernie Shack echoed Wittenbraker’s responses
Pendleton Spicer
I believe that defunding the Police is a mistake. One of the main roles of government is to provide the populace with a sense of safety by having a police force that prosecutes murder, theft and fraud. We need to reclaim funding for TPD so that they can hire and train qualified individuals who can fulfill their mission for reasonable pay. I believe that laws restricting murder, theft of all kinds and fraud need to be enforced and that the police should be enabled to do so justly. The police are here to protect the citizens of Tucson, not be at the whim of elected and/or appointed officials.
Ward 4
Ross Kaplowitch
The Tucson Police Department needs additional personnel, training funds, mental health services and more. The City Council can support them by refusing to vilify and demonize the profession and instead lift up the men and women of TPD. The Council needs to work with TPD, not against them.
Nikki Lee
The Tucson Police Department has incredible leadership under Chief Chad Kasmar, and he is doing an outstanding job of leading our teammates in the department, leading operations, and advocating strongly for solutions to the challenges both the department and community face.
One of the biggest challenges we have in the Tucson Police Department relates to staffing. Although TPD is authorized and funded to have 871 sworn officers, to date, we have 808 sworn officers on board, and not all of them are “deployable”. This leaves 63 open vacancies, with 105 TPD employees eligible for retirement over the next 4 years.
This is not uncommon with other jurisdictions, and as a nation, we are facing waves of seasoned police officers who are eligible to retire, people leaving the profession mid-career, and a smaller number of people applying for academies and joining the police force.
In Tucson, having so many vacancies means that our officers are often working overtime, which can lead to burnout and all of the side effects that come along with burnout. It also means that calls for service must be prioritized with more scrutiny, and it may take longer for an officer to arrive on-scene than what the public expects in terms of service delivery.
The vast majority of TPD’s budget (92%) is directly related to personnel costs. This leads to a potential lack of investment in other resources that the department needs, such as essential law enforcement equipment, vehicle capacity, and other enabling capabilities that help TPD deliver safe and efficient services to Tucsonans.
To help overcome these challenges, Mayor & Council must continue to fund the department’s needs, as we have done every year that I’ve been on the Council, and innovate around alternative ways to retain and recruit teammates, integrate technology and other solutions to be more efficient with fewer humans, and explore additional ways to increase funding for public safety.