The Daily Agenda: Why are the police in your neighborhood?
Details about neighborhood police incidents and code violations are easy to find ... But they might not be for long ... Hate crimes at the UA on the rise.
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Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of police sirens on your usually quiet street and wondered what happened?
And what about that person on your block who appears to be operating a mechanic business out of their home? How do you find out if someone else has already reported them to the city?
Believe it or not, answers to these kinds of questions are easier to find than you might expect if you live in one of the city of Tucson’s 160-plus neighborhoods, thanks to the work of one Tucsonan.
For the last 15 years, Don Ijams has maintained and regularly updated a public database of police incidents and city code violations, with information broken down by neighborhood.
But Ijams is getting ready to step away from his post-retirement volunteer position and is hoping to hand off the task to someone new. If that doesn’t happen, residents will lose access to a valuable tool that provides details about hundreds of incidents that are unlikely to end up in the news.
A lifelong Tucsonan, Ijams spent 28 years working for the police department as a management analyst and was deeply involved in the department’s collection and use of data from 1977 through 2005.
When he retired, he got involved with his neighborhood association and decided to lean into his expertise.
“I was very familiar with the kinds of data the police department had,” Ijams said. “I wanted to bring my past experience to bear on the kinds of things that would be of interest to our neighbors.”
It turns out, the neighbors were most interested in learning more about police incidents and crime in the area. Ijams was up for the task, saying that providing this kind of information can also help clear up any misconceptions about what’s really happening when it comes to crime and public safety.
Ijams worked with Tucson police to identify what information they considered to be public information and get them to provide it in a public-facing way that was easy for him to access and retrieve.
“They tend to overdo it and hold onto everything they’ve got,” he said. “But the whole lot is public information and it’s just making them comfortable with parting with it and telling them it’s really not their data, it’s the public’s data.”
Ijams and the department eventually came to an agreement, and for the past 15 years, TPD has been providing him with a large data set that he can pull information from and match up the calls with geographic locations.
From there, he arranges the data by neighborhood, listing incidents by block number to protect the privacy of victims and residents.
Originally, he just collected data from his own neighborhood, but once he realized how easy it was to pull that data from the larger set provided by police, he figured it would be easy enough to get everyone’s data.
“It took awhile to massage all that to get it to what it is now, which is basically that it runs unattended,” Ijams said. “I can go on vacation and stuff and each day, (the data) is refreshed automatically. Then I update it when the new data is available.”
Once the police call listings were up and running, Ijams reached out to the city to see about getting information about code enforcement.
“It’s had its ups and downs in terms of interest for quite awhile. For a long time, it was graffiti, then it evolved into general purposes code enforcement and violations,” he said.
There was a third site for upcoming city court events, but when city courts changed the computer systems, the process for getting the data became more complicated and the city didn’t want to renegotiate.
The one flaw to the database, which Ijams acknowledges is a big one, is the lack of ability to include web-reported incidents. He’s been working with the city to get access to the information, but it’s not a quick fix.
“The police department for awhile has been installing a new records management system that’s been a real problem for them,” he said. “It’s been years in the process.”
The police department and city encourage the public to use the web-based reporting system for non-emergencies, so that’s probably a lot of data that Ijams and the public are missing out on.
“The web-based complaints tend to be disorder kind of things, but those are the things that drive people crazy. Homeless encampments, ongoing domestic violence situations, trash accumulation and things like that,” he said. “But if I can’t see it on the listing, others don’t know that it’s going on.”
But all good things must come to an end, and after 15 years, Ijams is getting ready to retire from his post-retirement gig. He’s identified a potential replacement and has high hopes that the person will follow through, but having another person or two in the queue wouldn’t hurt.
And while the city is not interested in maintaining the site, it will continue to provide the data and support to whoever takes over for Ijams.
We’re big fans of data, so we love these neighborhood listings. They include a ton of public information that we’d hate to see go away, so we’re hopeful the replacement works out and the databases live on.
Do you have any friends or family members who love data as much as we do? Send this story their way!
Rental rush: Several new housing projects for Tucson’s working class are underway across the city, the Arizona Daily Star’s Gabriela Rico reports. Both private and public developments are adding to the inventory of rental options for low-income residents, as well as people who don’t qualify for affordable housing programs but still can’t afford the price of luxury rentals. These projects include converting old motels and bars into affordable apartments and building new ground-up complexes in parts of town with a high concentration of blue-collar workers.
Stamp of approval: The Sierra Vista City Council has approved the final plat plan for the Buffalo Soldier Ranch housing development, which will be located off State Route 92 at the south end of the city, Arizona Public Media’s Summer Horn writes. The final plat plans to use the nearly 111-acre development for nearly 350 homes, but the developer still has to obtain a right-of-way permit and provide a native plant salvage plan before breaking ground.
Prison problems: The ex-Minneapolis police officer convicted in the murder of George Floyd was stabbed by another inmate Friday at a federal prison in Tucson, the Associated Press reports. Derek Chauvin was reportedly seriously injured, but his attorney said Saturday that the Federal Bureau of Prisons had not updated Chauvin’s family on his condition. The medium-security Federal Correctional Institution where Chauvin was stabbed has reportedly been “plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages.”
Hate crimes rising: The University of Arizona saw a steep increase in hate crimes reported on campus in 2022, the Daily Wildcat’s Lizzy Sorenson reports. The UA’s Annual Security and Fire Safety Report showed 10 hate crimes reported in 2022, with ASU reporting no hate crimes last year. The report defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense committed that manifests evidence that the victim was intentionally selected because of the perpetrator’s bias against the victim.”
Container controversy: The Star’s Tim Steller says that the push to turn shipping containers for Arizona’s border wall into affordable housing options has stalled in Southern Arizona, nine months after Gov. Katie Hobbs said the state was working on a plan to make that happen. Steller argues that the containers should be cheaper or even free to groups that want to turn them into affordable housing. About 1,900 of the original 2,200 are still up for sale.
Essential expenses: A new cosmetic spa steps away from the UA lets students use their school-issued debit cards to pay for botox injections, lip fillers and more, the DW’s Olivia Krupp reports. Students or their parents can deposit up to $1,000 onto their student identification cards, called CatCards, which can be used as debit cards on campus or at a few select off-campus businesses. An employee at SKNRGY said this is the most popular payment method amongst students.
“I normally go to Skinjectables,” said UA junior Aubree Amoriello. “But I heard that SKNRGY was using CatCash and I was like, ‘Oh I’ll just go there, it’s basically free — it’s CatCash.”
Curt is stuck on the other side of the country for the next several days with a case of COVID-19 and Caitlin is juggling the final week of classes at the UA, so our publication schedule might look a little different this week as we work our way back up to full staffing. Thanks for bearing with us!
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