Tucson, Arizona

The City of Tucson not only struggles with an increasing rate of gun-related crime, but with a lack of sufficient investigative information for TPD detectives to pursue GRC cases as well. To address these issues, the TPD plans to deploy investigative resources or innovative technology, such as non-relational databases and natural language machine learning models, to disrupt the most at-risk connections in the community. Their overall goal is to improve investigative outcomes using fewer resources while also minimizing their footprint in the community. Through a partnership with researchers from the Collaborative Solutions Lab, LLC., the TPD will evaluate the impacts of implementing this innovative technology on policing practices, investigative outcomes, and gun related crime.

Data Highlight:

• In the first quarter of the year, Tucson’s gun-related crime (GRC) data showed a 120.1% increase from 2022 to 2023.
• In 2022, Tucson’s clearance rate for GRC cases was 34.8%.
• In 2022, 35.4% of GRC cases were unassigned and closed due to insufficient information.