The South Tucson City Council unanimously voted to re-open the investigation into whether a South Tucson resident was assaulted last month while documenting ICE arresting a man in the Walgreens parking lot.
A short video of the 66-year-old Steven Davis being pepper-sprayed by federal agents went viral last month, but South Tucson Police Department officials closed the investigation shortly after the incident.
The chief of police for South Tucson, Danny Denogean, declined to answer questions after the council direction on Tuesday, but did refer to a legal memo written by South Tucson City Attorney Jon Paladini. The memo outlines why the case was not re-opened despite political pressure from the council.
Roughly 10 days after the April 6 incident, Paladini told the council it would be difficult to investigate federal agents working in their official capacity.
“Local law enforcement’s authority to investigate federal officers is substantially constrained by the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause,” Paladini wrote. “Practically speaking, even where the Supremacy Clause does not serve as an absolute bar, local prosecution is ineffective because the case can be removed to federal court.”
On Tuesday night, Davis rejected the premise that South Tucson was powerless to investigate what happened to him while acting as a volunteer with the Tucson Rapid Response Network. The group responds to immigration enforcement activities in Arizona and records the interactions.
“You don’t need a degree in constitutional law. I was assaulted. It’s a state offense. Federal agents enjoy no immunity when they commit state offenses,” Davis said. “It’s no one’s job in this room to decide whether that agent, if it was an agent, is immune from prosecution.”
Steven Davis told the South Tucson City Council about his frustration with police refusing to investigate last month’s assault.
South Tucson Mayor Roxanna Valenzuela conceded that while South Tucson might not have the resources to investigate the incident alone, other jurisdictions would step in to investigate.
“I do understand that our city has minimal resources. I know that our police department is lacking a full investigative unit,” Valenzuela said. “But like we have done in the past, we have reached out for help and there are neighboring jurisdictions that are willing to help us.”
Although she was not at the meeting, Pima County Attorney Laura Conover asked Valenzuela to read a prepared statement during the meeting following Davis’ presentation.
“It does not matter what uniform you wear or what badge you claim to carry, you cannot violate state law. You will be held accountable. I continue to push for and anticipate a legitimate law enforcement investigation into the incident in South Tucson,” Conover said.
And Conover, who has gone on the record as willing to prosecute federal agents, said it doesn’t matter who it was that pepper-sprayed Davis.
“No one is immune from prosecution. If you cause harm, and I can prove it, we will haul you into court,” Conover said.
While it is unclear who might step in to handle the investigation, both Pima County and the City of Tucson have a long history of working closely with the 1.2-square-mile city, especially the City of Tucson’s police and fire departments, which routinely step in during emergencies.
On Wednesday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Public Affairs Officer Monica Yoas put out a statement about the April 6 incident, although it does not mention Davis by name.
Instead, it refers to protesters who were pepper-sprayed for “actively impeding egress from a commercial parking lot at 29th Street and South Sixth Avenue.”
“The individuals present were not simply observers; they actively obstructed law enforcement operations by surrounding ICE vehicles, using their bodies and bicycles to block movement, and prevent officers from departing. Emergency lights and sirens were activated in an effort to disperse the group, but the obstruction persisted,” Yoas said in a prepared statement.
It is unclear what other agencies might get involved in the coming days, but we’ve been told that Conover’s office has contacted Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes about the incident.
Democrats in Legislative District 20 issued a “statement of concern” against Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez Monday night, a few steps removed from formally censuring the lawmaker.
The LD20 Democrats last month considered a formal request to censure Hernandez over her voting record at the Legislature over the last eight years, although her support for a constitutional convention to impose congressional term limits earlier this year was apparently the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Hernandez called the action a politically motivated stunt that was being pushed by her rival for the LD20 Senate seat, former Tucson City Councilman Rocque Perez.
“They are doing this solely to generate negative attention ahead of the primary. It is a political tactic, not a principled stand,” Hernandez told us. “What makes it worse is the individuals driving this process repeatedly lied about my record and, on multiple occasions, racistly confused me with another Latina colleague with the same last name in the Legislature.”
Perez has denied he was involved with the complaint.
State Rep. Alma Hernandez
One insider we spoke to said the discussion amounted to a circular firing squad, with no real winners in the fight.
LD20 Democrats who backed the decision point to roughly 150 times Hernandez broke with the party at the Legislature and voted with Republicans over a four-year period.
Precinct Committeeman Matt Capalby brought this to the LD20 Committee’s attention as an urgent matter, noting that a Constitutional Convention is a Project 2025 priority.
“This action is about accountability,” said Capalby. “The issue before us is not one disagreement or one difficult vote. Representative Hernandez’s documented pattern of conduct has increasingly aligned with Republican priorities while undermining the objectives of Democratic leadership, caucus strategy, and the values of the district. Representative Hernandez remains the duly elected representative of Legislative District 20,however, elected officials must remain accountable to the communities and principles they were elected to represent.”
Hernandez siding with Republicans is fairly well known in Democratic circles, but it’s less clear how often she was the deciding vote on a bill or whether any of those votes actually avoided Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto stamp.
The timing of the action put some LD20 Democrats on the defensive, arguing that discussing her legislative record months before a contested primary simply wasn’t the right time.
Hernandez has consistently told LD20 Democratic precinct committee members, and the Tucson Agenda, that she’d be willing to discuss her record directly — but argued the LD20 Committee was out of line for taking the vote.
“Rather than hold open forums where I can have discussions of my legislative record and be examined on the merits, the committee opted for a rushed, accusatory process built on falsehoods and steeped in racial bias designed to skirt LD20 bylaws,” Hernandez told us.
Oh, and the LD20 Democrats also made a request for action: Attend at least three LD20 meetings a year and give a report discussing her votes in the Arizona legislature.
Pushing back: The detention of Karla Toledo, a DACA recipient who was pulled from her home in Tucson by ICE agents, is stirring up opposition from high-profile Southern Arizona Democrats and progressive groups, per Paul Ingram of the Tucson Sentinel. Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero and Pima County Supervisor Matt Heinz, along with Scholarship A-Z, an advocacy group for DACA recipients in Arizona, have all condemned Toledo’s detention. Toledo’s parents say she doesn’t have a criminal record and she’s kept her DACA status up to date, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel reports. Toledo was only a year old when her mother brought her from Sonora to Arizona. Local immigration advocates are highlighting Toledo’s detention as a sign that a new group of immigrants — those brought to the U.S. as children who have legal protection — is vulnerable to the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, Yana Kunichoff reports for the Arizona Luminaria.
Creepy stuff: A former high-ranking employee of the Cochise County Attorney’s Office just pleaded guilty to a felony charge of tampering with evidence, Terri Jo Neff reports for the Herald/Review. Paul Correa was accused of recording a young girl inside a Target store in Sierra Vista. Correa started deleting files from his phone when the girl’s father confronted him in the store’s parking lot. The county attorney’s office fired Correa when he was arrested last December.
A new union in town: Teachers and staff at City High School and two Paulo Freire Freedom Schools voted to unionize, per a press release from the Arizona Alliance of Charter Teachers and Staff. Union organizers have been hoping that other charter schools in the state will follow suit.
Recalls work sometimes: The kerfuffle over an aluminum recycling plant may have just cost half the Benson City Council their jobs, Nick Rommel reports for Arizona Public Media. City residents who were upset about the plant launched a recall effort in December to kick out Council members Patrick Boyle, Darren Hayes and Levi Johnson. Unofficial results from Tuesday’s recall election show all three lost their seats.
Local politics is never dull. Support local journalism so you don’t miss out on any of it.
Time to upgrade: A bipartisan trio of U.S. representatives from Arizona are pushing for a major overhaul of the port of entry in downtown Nogales, which is prone to flooding, EJ Clarke reports for KGUN. Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani was joined by fellow Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh and Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security calling the port “a national asset in desperate need of investment.” Speaking of Nogales, Karloz Chavez, who was raised in the border city, just won the American Poolplayers Association team Master championship, per the Green Valley News’ Jeff Chew.
Oh, the trials and tribulations of local government reporting.
A small quirk of the South Tucson City Council is its public meetings are held in the city courthouse, just next door to city hall.
It’s an efficient use of the space, even if the press basically gets sentenced to the jury box during crowded meetings.
And just like most government buildings, they seem to turn down the air conditioning after 5 p.m. after employees go home.
So you can guess what happens when you stuff ~70 human space heaters into a crowded room for several hours.
An hour into Tuesday night’s meeting, the room had the exhausted vibe of an airport gate during a flight delay.
Joe would like to thank the council member who asked staff to turn up the AC.
Several reporters were only a few degrees away from filing open records requests directly from the much cooler parking lot.