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On Nov. 14, as your Pima County Attorney, I attended the TUSD Governing Board meeting. The brilliant lawyers in our agency’s fully-staffed Civil Division had drafted an Inter-Governmental Agreement for us to provide 10 gun locks to every single TUSD school along with a supporting educational campaign to keep firearms out of the hands of children to reduce accidental and suicidal incidents.

The bipartisan TUSD Board approved the agreement unanimously.

This is but one of the many Public Health and Safety triumphs we have been marking during our three years in office: another accomplishment that attorneys from the previous administration who chose not to remain after I became County Attorney have missed. It was their choice to leave, and it remains their right to criticize. However, they do not have the right to create their own ‘facts.’ Misinformation and disinformation cannot go unaddressed.

Here is the actual record of the People’s Office:

Violent crime is down. Homicides in particular are at a 34% reduction from this point two years ago, outperforming the nation and the rest of the state. This is County-wide data relied upon by our Office and law enforcement.

Prevention is up. We handed out 18,463 gun locks on nights and weekends last year, and the Public Service Announcement about calling 911 in case of overdose that we produced with our Police Chief and County Sheriff is making an impact in keeping people alive.

We teach and advocate an aggressive charging and detention standard when we believe a defendant poses an ongoing threat of harm. The only difference now in this current Administration is that our violent crime units are better resourced, holding violent actors accountable, because we have moved substance use disorder and mental health safely back to Public Health instead of criminalizing illness as a felony.

Our new Fraud Unit reached $1 million in restitution for victims of scams at its one-year mark.

In the Civil Division, when faced with reproductive health litigation, we reversed the Office’s previous course, we took on then-Attorney General Brnovich, and we won the Appellate Court Order still in place today protecting reproductive health services statewide.

When I took office, there was no Director of our Victim Services in place in January of 2021 ... this at the height of the COVID crisis and critical community need. In fact, in the last seven years of the previous administration, there had been five different directors. Our current director will mark three full years in the post come spring, a stability the division had not enjoyed in a decade.

As a pro-employee administrator, in October of 2021, I secured the Office’s first agency-wide salary increase since 1997. Further, we left behind a paper file system, joining the modern world online.

And as for hiring, while I did not retain one woman in a supervisory position held over from the previous administration, that fact should be put in the context of our record-breaking hiring and promoting of women and people of color. In Civil alone, 6 of 8 supervisors are women or POC or both. Please look at our website at to get accurate, up-to-date information.

In a first-in-the-nation action, we have specially deputized Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O’odham tribal prosecutors to better serve indigenous victims.

Despite extraordinary pressure, we upheld our promise and disbanded the expensive and inherently racist process of seeking the death penalty. (See AZ’s most recent State report.)

We created ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s only adult Restorative Justice program and are working on our fourth pilot case. Victims can now be made whole more quickly and more fully as a result.

An accurate accusation by the former administration seems to be that I have ushered in significant change. And to that, I must respond, in my patented dark Irish humor way: guilty as charged. Pima County voted for change, and progress is being delivered.

The future is bright. We in the Pima County Attorney’s Office — The People’s Office — are working hard to meet the community’s need for a healthier and safer place to live. And there is so much work yet to be done. Luckily, I am surrounded by extraordinary civil servants who love this community as much as I do. As much as you do.

To be continued ...