The Policing Project at NYU School of Law has published an in-depth study on community safety and alternative first response in Tucson, the second report in a series on public safety innovations across the country.
Media Contact: Joshua Manson, Policing Project at NYU School of Law, joshua.manson@nyu.edu
Tucson, AZ – The Policing Project at NYU School of Law today released a report on community safety and non-police emergency first response in Tucson. The report – Tucson’s Community Safety Response and Service Portfolio: Achieving a Cohesive, Integrated, and Community-Supported Response Model – finds a shared desire among residents and city officials for expanding policing alternatives and includes recommendations for the creation of more non-police 911 response programs.
The report’s authors conducted in-depth conversations with both Tucson community members and municipal employees. In their conversations with community members, the researchers spoke to Tucson residents who expressed reluctance to call 911 when experiencing an emergency, largely due to a distrust of law enforcement. Those respondents feared that calling 911 will inevitably result in unnecessary criminal legal system consequences; physical harm, especially to people of color; and involvement of Border Patrol and immigration authorities.
In recent years, the City of Tucson has developed several public safety innovations, including specialty units housed within the police and fire departments to respond to low-level calls, frequent 911 callers, and issues relating to substance use and homelessness; and a Community Safety, Health, and Wellness program to coordinate response and care across agencies and services. The City has also embedded clinicians in its 911 emergency communications center, and call operators can transfer callers experiencing a behavioral health crisis to a nonprofit-run specialized response provider.
As today’s report notes, these programs have “merit and promise.” They also, however, contain important gaps that the City should address. Some programs only operate during business hours, while others lack capacity to meet community needs. And in general, Tucson residents themselves were not well aware of the programs and efforts that the City has been advancing.
The report’s authors recommend that Tucson establish more non-police 911 response options and continue to divert community needs, where possible, from the 911 system. Due to the City’s insufficient non-police 911 response options, a significant share of the police department’s resources are utilized responding to issues that may not require an armed police response – all while the police department experiences serious staffing challenges. In 2021 nearly 15 percent of all 911 calls to which TPD responded involved issues of trespassing, suspicious persons, welfare checks, mental health, disturbances, disputes, and fights.
Recent efforts show real promise. Beginning in June of last year, a real-time alternative response team – Community Health Acute Response Team (CHART) — has been dispatched through the 911 system, and the City has undertaken efforts to triage 911 calls. The City’s Community Safety, Health, and Wellness Office is in the process of expanding its Care Coordinator program to respond directly to community needs, and just last month, the City began its rollout of a 311 program, which will connect residents to services outside of 911 and will provide emergency call-takers an option to divert non-emergency calls to an appropriate line. These programs, however, are still in their infancy and need continued support and funding.
The report also recommends formalizing and improving coordination among the network of service providers, and increasing engagement both internally – among City stakeholders – and externally to raise awareness about the non-police public safety options already available.
"Tucson's challenge is to take its patchwork of services and connect them into a coordinated response system so that people in crisis don’t fall through the cracks," said Jessica Gillooly, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Suffolk University and one of the report’s authors.
Today’s report is the second in a series of research projects undertaken by the Policing Project’s Reimagining Public Safety initiative. Conducted by researchers from Suffolk University and Andrew Carnegie Fellow Tamara Leech, it presents findings from intensive conversations with Tucson residents and municipal stakeholders across several agencies about their experiences with, perceptions of, and ideas and attitudes toward the City’s public safety programs.
The Policing Project’s Reimagining Public Safety initiative supports strong, healthy, and safe communities by working to end overreliance on law enforcement. Its experts have been conducting research and engagement about community safety concerns and innovations in Denver, San Francisco, Tucson, and Chicago. The initiative is producing guidance for cities on alternative response and police alternatives that better address the actual reasons community members call 911, and has created a national peer-learning community of practice to support the field of alternative response.
For more information on the initiative, visit SafetyReimagined.org.
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The Policing Project at NYU School of Law promotes public safety through transparency, equity, and democratic engagement. Learn about the Policing Project atwww.policingproject.org.