The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Laura Conover
Since being elected as your Pima County Attorney, my focus has been on keeping our community safe and healthy, whether from a global pandemic then, or from the chaos and confusion we are dealing with now in 2025.
Can I take a step back in time, for a moment? A few years prior to COVID, and before my time as your County Attorney, I was appointed by the presiding judge of our federal court to help manage and advocate for some 400 federal attorneys in courts throughout the state.
When COVID hit, my goal was to help those attorneys and other people on the ground, like deputies with the U.S. Marshal's Service stay as safe and healthy as possible. Devastatingly, three of our attorneys did succumb to COVID before the vaccine became available.
That position in federal court was my first attempt at the job of administration with far-reaching and complex communications and crisis management. And, I remember those COVID times as trying to swim through mud. Occasionally, as mentioned above, there were tears of sadness.
The pandemic was still raging, and the life-saving vaccine was still not yet available when I walked into the Pima County Attorney’s Office in January of 2021 as the new leader. My top priority was to keep every employee and volunteer in the Pima County Legal Services Building alive.
More mud. More tears. But we didn’t lose any of those lives, at least.
Since that time, we have learned a great deal. We grew. We showed resilience. We helped be a part of a 50% reduction in homicides, and nearly all markers of violent crime are down from that era. We more than survived. We triumphed. But the clouds once again are beginning to brew, in a new way.
As your County Attorney, I now find myself in a new epidemic of a precipitous downward slide of democracy.
The Trump Administration has brought confusion and danger upon our cities and upon themselves by ordering federal agents to leave home, travel to other cities, and to work completely beyond their training and experience, while allowing them to mask their identities.
I call that reckless.
I can’t believe I find myself with the same job I had in 2020. Trying my damn best to keep us alive.
In 2020, I had some 400 attorneys and countless more Deputy Marshals that we were just trying everything we could to keep alive. And now, there’s 1.1 million of you, my beloved Old Pueblo.
So here goes:
I need you to be smart out there.
I need you to stay cool, calm and collected.
If you think you are witnessing improper or illegal conduct, then your recording of it from a safe distance can be useful. Remember that these agents are human beings, and getting in their face and screaming or threatening just puts everyone at high risk and doesn’t produce any evidence of the conduct you believe is illegal. And worse, you could easily be mistaken, which has now apparently happened at least four times in Tucson.
In response to footage from other cities, a long-time local columnist said Tucson should be planning a “blanket resistance.” He is implying we should meet recklessness with more recklessness, and I wanted to scream from the rooftops against that.
Instead, I am here trying to educate:
— There is a vast difference between long-term criminal investigations with warrants signed off on by federal judges (think undercover fentanyl busts!) -and- the warrantless ICE sweeps we have seen in other cities.
— There is an equally vast difference between inserting yourself in a criminal investigation and peacefully observing an ICE sweep while recording from a safe distance.
We have examples in Tucson. DPS has now been confused with ICE twice, and DEA once, while trying to recover drugs and guns from crime scenes.
I am so grateful that everyone: community and law enforcement recognized the confusion, and all went back home uninjured and alive.
To the point: We haven’t yet had any ICE sweeps here in Tucson.
But, they may come. And if so, again, we must be cool, calm, and collected.
With that in mind, I am urging the community not to meet recklessness with more recklessness.
We must not fight fire with more fire, but with water.
So that I may pray you all stay alive.
Godspeed, Laura
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