Bank of America partners with TPD 'Safe Place' project to aid LGBTQ community

The placing of a rainbow-colored sticker, with a badge and “Safe Place” lettering across it, officially designated Bank of America as the largest partner with Tucson Police Department’s Safe Place program to provide safe harbor for the LGBTQ community.

Bank of America is implementing the program at 13 locations found as far east as Houghton Road, Ajo Way to the west and Cortaro and Valencia roads to the north and south. Each will provide a safe place for victims of crimes. Tucson is the fifth city where Bank of America has partnered with local law enforcement to promote similar programs.

The corporation’s location near the El Con Mall was the first to be designated Thursday morning.

“We know Tucson is generally a safe place to be, but sometimes, especially with regard to the LGBTQ community, there are acts of violence that are occurring and we want to be part of the solution to ensure everyone feels safe in Tucson,” according to Lacey Perry, a market manager for the corporation in Tucson.

Perry added that Bank of America staff have been trained to help people dealing with bias-motivated or hate crimes find safe refuge within the buildings until officers arrive.

Tucson police initially launched the program in the North Forth Avenue area in 2016, and while community members took to the program, it faced setbacks when the officers spearheading it moved to other department positions, according to Daily Star archives.

Now, two of the Police Department’s detectives are working as Safe Place liaisons to ensure the program grows.

“It’s building a relationship with the different communities,” said Detective Gilbert Martinez. “That’s probably the best part of all of this and knowing they can contact us anonymously if they’d like, if they just want to provide information and don’t want to speak with anybody or they can call us directly.”

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Martinez added that every officer in the department went through a brief training to know how the program is being implemented in the community.

“Everybody’s aware of what’s going on, so if someone approaches them and brings up Safe Place, they’re going to know automatically what’s going on or at least have some sort of idea walking into whatever the incident is,” Detective Dana Davis-Richardson said about the department’s response to different incidents.

Going forward, the detectives hope that not only more companies join the initiative, such as Starbucks being next on the list, but other law-enforcement agencies will as well.

“I think the department would like to see the other agencies jump on board, which I can’t imagine is not going to be the case here pretty quick,” said Davis-Richardson.

“Then that’s going to encompass the Tucson general area and all the adjoining cities. Everybody will be under one program basically, everybody’s going to know what’s going on and no one’s going to go unrepresented.”