The Tucson Police Department is the local law enforcement agency for the city of Tucson, Arizona. It is composed of around 1200 sworn officers and 200 civilian staffers. According to their website at www4.tucsonaz.gov/police “The mission of the Tucson Police Department is to serve the public in partnership with our community, to protect life and property, prevent crime, and resolve problems.”
The TPD is organized into 4 broad Bureaus. The Administrative Services Bureau handles, much as one might expect, most of the administrative functions of the department including human resources, training, finances, recruiting, information and records. The Support Services Bureau is the home of specialized divisions designed to handle unique situations and cases such as communications, traffic enforcement, specialized response, tactical support, hostage negotiations, emergency management and homeland security.
The Field Services Bureau maintains the department’s Honor Guard as well as serving as the department’s home for patrol services. For the purposes of uniformed patrol services as well as other functions, the city of Tucson, Arizona is divided into five Operations Divisions. Operations Division South, often referred to as “Team 1”, and is home to 167 staff members, both civilian and sworn officers. Operations Division East is the largest of the patrol divisions, covering an area almost 120 square miles in size, over 50 percent of the city’s landmass. Operations Division West, also known as “Team 2”, serves the northwestern part of Tucson and maintains eleven uniformed patrol squads. Operations Division Midtown, known as “Team 3”, is composed of 44 square miles in the heart of the city and maintains 12 uniformed patrol squads. Operations Division Downtown is the newest of the Operations Divisions and it includes around 70 officers and civilian staff members in addition to three motorcycle officers from the Traffic Section.
Additional details and information on the organization of the department and the individual Divisions an Units can be found through a handy page of links at www4.tucsonaz.gov/police/organization.
The Investigative Services Bureau is subdivided by types of crime. The Central Investigations Division is comprised of the Violent Crimes Section, the Property Crimes Section and the Family/Sex Crimes Section. The Counter Narcotics Alliance handles all narcotics investigations, sometimes in cooperation with the DEA. The special investigations Section is comprised of the Street Crimes Section and the Gang Interdiction Section. Finally, the Forensics Section is comprised of the Crime Laboratory, the Evidence Section and the identification Section.
In the city of Tucson, Arizona there are around 531,530 residents with an annual average of 30,280 crimes. Violent Crime accounts for about 13 percent of those crimes with murders at 43 (0.05 per 1000 residents), rapes at 240 (0.45 per 1000 residents), robberies at 1,262 (2.37 per 1000 residents) and assaults at 2,326 (4.38 per 1000 residents) for a grand total of 3,871 violent crimes per annum (7.28 per 1000 residents). Property crimes account for the other 87 percent of those crimes with burglaries at 5,099 (9.59 per 1000 residents), thefts at 18,774 (35.32 per 1000 residents) and motor vehicle thefts at 2,536 (4.77 per 1000 residents) for a grand total of 26,409 property crimes per annum (49.68 per 1000 residents). Overall, a resident of Tucson, Arizona has a 1 in 137 chance of becoming a victim of a violent crime and a 1 in 20 chance of becoming a victim of a property crime each year.
The Records Section functions as the storehouse for all the TPD’s police reports and related records. All the reports on file n the Records Section are considered public records and can be garnered through a public records request. Requests must be made to the Records Section either in person or by mail. Information on requesting public records from the records Section can be found at https://www.tucsonaz.gov/police, where you will find links to PDF request forms in both English and Spanish as well as the physical and email addresses where the requests can be made.
Information on inmates that are currently held in the city of Tucson jail system can be found at pimasheriff.org/jail-info/ which provides an alphabetically organized listing of inmates.