A string of deadly crashes in Tucson — many tied to illegal street racing over the past six months — has prompted renewed calls for the Tucson City Council to take decisive action.
The deaths of 3-year-old Anna Garcia and Oscar Pedro Salazar, 33, have become rallying cries for Tucsonans pushing for tougher enforcement, stronger laws and safer streets.
It’s a problem that’s been around for a while and won’t go away. Just since the start of the year, 38 people have died in vehicle crashes on Tucson roads.
On Tuesday, the council heard from Tucson Police Chief Monica Prieto, who outlined stepped-up enforcement efforts, including targeted operations in areas known for street racing that led to arrests and vehicle seizures.
Photo caption. (Source).
She also detailed the use of real-time monitoring tools — including specialized, and controversial, license plate readers — to track and respond to racing activity.
“TPD’s street racing response reflects the significant evolution from reactive enforcement to a comprehensive intelligence-led strategy targeting organized criminal activity,” Prieto said.
The department also deployed six “traffic zebras,” officers who volunteered to focus specifically on dangerous driving, particularly street racing.
The hour-long discussion centered on council members and constituents emphasizing stricter penalties for drivers and potential charges for spectators who profit from late-night races.
Families call for harsher penalties
During call to the audience, Emmanuel Garcia, the father of Anna Garcia, said he wasn’t before the council to ask for punishment for the sake of punishment.
He was asking the council to take action before another family loses a loved one.
“I’m here because on April 10, 2026, my life was permanently changed by street racing,” Garcia said. “The consequences for street racing are not strong enough to stop it. Especially for young drivers and repeat offenders, if the risk doesn’t outweigh the reward, the behavior continues.”
His sister, Samantha Bracamonte, wore a T-shirt with a picture of Anna on it and urged the council to take action.
“In a matter of seconds, our family’s life was changed forever. We didn’t just lose Ana. We lost her future, her dreams, her laughter. And the hardest part about this is that we feel like it could have been prevented,” Bracamonte said.
The family is pushing for the adoption of “Anna’s Law” which would call for mandatory prison sentences for those convicted of seriously injuring or killing someone while street racing.
The proposed law also would require the immediate vehicle impoundment and potential permanent seizure of vehicles used for street racing, as well as increased fines and license revocation for those caught driving recklessly.
The petition, as of Wednesday night, had more than 2,700 signatures.
Council majority backs stronger penalties
Many on the council were supportive of harsher penalties for street racers, but the city can’t act alone.
The council can lower speed limits and pay for increased TPD traffic enforcement, but it doesn’t have the power to change state laws that determine penalties for street racing or vehicular manslaughter.
That’s up to the state Legislature.
A larger issue for the council is that street racing can’t be addressed solely by enforcement measures.
The city spent decades widening streets to improve traffic flow, which led to empty streets in the middle of the night that are tempting to mostly young men who have been caught racing.
One solution Mayor Regina Romero said should be revisited is the re-introduction of red light cameras, which voters banned in 2015.
“We cannot possibly have officers everywhere all at once. And so we need to make sure that we use technology to our advantage and enhance the work that TPD has been doing, the successful work that TPD has been doing on our streets, to help mitigate the dangers of street racing,” Romero said.
It would take another voter referendum on red light cameras to bring them back. So far, the council is just discussing it.
Unrelated to the discussion on Tuesday, Councilwoman Miranda Schubert read aloud a list of crashes on Tucson streets — a two-week compendium of drivers and pedestrians who were seriously hurt (or died) since the last council meeting.
Schubert wants the city to take more proactive steps to make streets safer, including for pedestrians at busy intersections.
While cracking down on street racing may sound like a slam-dunk political priority, it’s not that simple. The city has removed pedestrian crosswalks over the past decade. Just like widening the streets, those decisions were made to improve traffic flow.
And the one time the city moved to slow traffic by turning a four-lane road on the Southside into a two-lane road, it was seen as widely controversial.
Not a good sign: TUSD is working out an arrangement with the Arizona Schools for the Deaf and Blind to take on students, now that the ASDB campus in Tucson is set to close. But when Katie Sienko, the head of the Arizona Association of the Deaf, arrived at the TUSD governing board meeting last week, the district didn’t have an American Sign Language interpreter for her, the Arizona Luminaria’s Shannon Conner reports. She asked for an interpreter four days before the meeting, but the district says they need 10 days notice.
“I feel to show up here with no interpreter, in a room of hearing people who don’t know Sign, asking a friend to interpret for me, how does that make us feel comfortable that the deaf and hard-of-hearing students that will go to your schools will not feel isolated,” Sienko said.
Can’t unsee it: Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva went to ICE’s Dilley detention center in Texas to speak with immigrant families held there and highlight the “inhumane” conditions inside the detention center, where private prison company CoreCivic makes $15 million a month. She called the conditions “vile” and a “black eye for our nation.”
New gig, same shtick: If you’re wondering what former Tucson-area state Sen. Justine Wadsack has been up to, you can just ask her avatar! Wadsack created an AI-generated avatar that announced her new gig as vice president of EZAZ, a civic group determined to convince everyone that Arizona’s elections are rigged, the Phoenix New Times’ Morgan Fischer reports.
Now that’s an upgrade: Arizona Public Media is leaving the basement of the Modern Languages building on the UA campus and opening a $65 million facility on the south side of Tucson, KGUN’s Eddie Celaya reports. The new home of the PBS and NPR affiliate for Southern Arizona was funded entirely by local donors, without any money coming from corporations or the government.
We don’t get any money from corporations, either. Good thing we’ve got readers like you to support us!
Another school closing its doors: The Patagonia Montessori Elementary School is closing at the end of the school year, and the student-run radio show broadcast its final edition last month, Graham Krewinghaus reports for the Nogales International. But the radio emcees at KPUP didn’t let it get them down, at least not entirely. They kept the light-hearted banter and movie quotes going right up until the end.
One of the great parts of covering local government is all the quirky little things you discover about how a city operates.
Sometimes it feels like the nerdier it is, the better.
We had a big “Huh, that’s interesting” moment when Tucson City Council member Selina Barajas threw out a question we hadn’t really thought about.
How many of the city’s parking meters aren’t working?
That’s a solid question from a council member. But what really got us was the underlying question: How many parking meters are there to begin with?
It turns out the city has 1,809 parking meters.
To answer Barajas’ question, 544 meters are in “some form of disrepair.”
Here’s another quirky question: How much does it cost to replace a parking meter?
$900.
Huh. We had no idea.
This meter close to City Hall was designed to take donations for the homeless but the screen no longer works. Maybe it takes coins?