The Chief Magnus Experiment

Chris Magnus became the Chief of Police of the Tucson Police Department in January 2016. In the Welcome Message From Chief Magnus, he makes several promises to include a commitment to “full-service policing,” ensuring the best possible service for everyone who deals with the Tucson Police Department, he promises engagement with the community in a variety of ways, the list goes on. We posted the letter below.

Welcome Message from Chief Magnus

Thank you for visiting the Tucson Police Department’s website. I hope the information you find here will be useful to you and enhance your awareness about what we do. Our department is committed to “full-service policing.” This means that our goal is to go beyond just responding to calls. We want to insure the best possible service for everyone we deal with, engage with the community in a variety of ways, partner with residents to prevent and reduce crime, be good listeners, provide relentless follow-up as needed, and demonstrate both empathy and compassion whenever possible.

The sworn and professional staff of the Tucson Police Department work here because they care. Many of our employees have grown up in or around Tucson; others specifically moved here because they identified Tucson as a special place to live and work. We serve a large population of over 600,000 residents in a metro area of well over 1,000,000 residents covering a land mass of close to 230 square miles. This is a big city with the friendliness and exceptional quality of life typically associated with a small town. Tucson is home to the University of Arizona, Raytheon Aerospace and Defense Company, the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, and many other businesses, educational institutions, and major employers. Tucson is also a community of neighborhoods, residents active in local government, and folks who care about preserving the “Old Pueblo” while at the same time cheering new growth. Our strategy for policing is to assign officers geographically throughout the city with the expectation they build solid relationships with the residents, business owners, school, faith communities, and non-profits in their sectors. We believe that when residents and police officers get to know each other, trust is developed, and there is no limit to what we can accomplish together. I think our agency is second to none when it comes to smart, creative, and dedicated people who are significantly invested in public safety. Do you have what it takes to join our team? We have ongoing recruiting and hiring opportunities for both sworn and professional positions within our department. Tucson PD provides an exceptional learning environment, a stable and rewarding career, and the chance to really make a difference in the lives of others. Over the weeks and months ahead, we will continue to expand and improve our presence on social media. Please consider following me on Twitter @ChiefCMagnus and get regular updates about TPD on our “Tucson Police Department” Facebook page. I am always happy to answer your questions, respond to your concerns, or consider your suggestions for how we can continually improve! My office number is 520-791-4441 or I can be e-mailed at chris.magnus@tucsonaz.gov. Thank you again for your interest in our department.

Chris Magnus

Chief of Police

The leadership of the City of Tucson decided to pay Chris Magnus, a self-described “agent of change,” a starting annual salary of $210,000.00 (that’s $100.96 an hour). With that much money for the new chief and the lofty promises made by Chief Magnus in his welcome letter, the city leadership seemed pretty serious about getting down to some community policing.

By the way, Community Policing is defined as “A police strategy for fostering trust in a community in the effort to enhance crime prevention, in which officers hold regular meetings with community organizations and patrol on foot or on bikes to develop personal relationships with community members.”

Did any of this work? We have obtained several documents through public record requests to put the Magnus regime to the test. We also have much more on the way. We’ll start with the contract of Chris Magnus.

The contract for Chris Magnus written and approved by the City of Tucson Leadership is posted below.

We looked at the contract and found a few things; in addition to his $210,000.00 annual salary, the City of Tucson also contributed $24,500 annually to his deferred compensation account. Also, while Chief Magnus started at $100.96 an hour, he was making $105.04 an hour as of July 2021. By our math, he was making $218,483.20 annually when left. We do not know if the deferred compensation contributions made by the City of Tucson increased as his salary did.

We also noticed Section 10- Performance Review in the Magnus contract, which requires The City Manager to conduct a review of the performance of Chief Magnus at least once annually. They used the word “shall" (so you know they’re serious).

Well let’s see what the City Manager found in his annual evaluations regarding the performance of Chief Magnus. We submitted a public record request so we could see how he did, or at least how the City Manager thought he was doing.

The e-mail exchange between us and the city is posted below.

As you can see, we asked for the evaluations of the performance of Chief Magnus. Again, these are the evaluations that are required by his contract. And you can also see, those evals either don't exist or we just aren't allowed to have them. We wonder if those evaluations were ever done.

Here's another thing...

We took a closer look at the e-mail response from the City of Tucson that told us there were no evaluations of Chief Magnus for the nearly 6 years he was Tucson PD's police chief. Who was copied on that e-mail? Well let's take a look at each of the recipients and what we know about them. Our information is based on simple internet searches and their financial information is based on a public record request received in July 2021. If we are wrong on ANYTHING here, please let us know.

Michael Ortega, Tucson City Manager- Mr. Ortega makes an hourly wage of $117.44 or an estimated annual salary of $244,275.20.

Liana Perez, Deputy City Manager- Liana Perez makes an hourly wage of $95.63 or an estimated annual salary of $198,910.40.

Timothy Thomure, Interim Assistant City Manager- Mr. Thomure makes an hourly wage of $89.25 or an estimated annual salary of $185,640.

Joyce Garland, Assistant City Manager/ Chief Fianacial Officer- We couldn't find how much Joyce Garland is paid by taxpayers, but we estimate it is somewhere between $185,640.00-$198,910.40.

Lane Mandle, Chief of Staff/ City Manager's Office- We were unable to find how much a Chief of Staff for the City Manager's Office pulls down. We'll work on it!

Roger Randolph, Tucson City Clerk- Mr. Randolph makes an hourly wage of $72.53 or an estimated annually salary of $150,862.40.

Andrew Squire, Public Information Officer/ City Manager's Office- Mr. Squire makes an hourly wage of $44.23 or an estimated annual salary of $91,998.40.

**We did not find how much Cynthia Lopez, Executive Assistant/ City Manager's Office and Andrea Mejia-Flores, Management Assistant to the City Manager**

Here's the question, why is it that these people were copied on this simple public record request? This list of people includes some heavy hitters, most of them are the 1%. In fact, if you add up all of their salaries, you come up with well over $1,000,000.00 a year paid by Tucson taxpayers. Here's another question, why was the performance of Chief Magnus never evaluated by the City Manager as required by the listed contract?

Scoreboard

We were pretty sure that Tucson is NOT a better or safer city since Chief Chris Magnus took the reins of the Tucson Police Department, but we wanted to confirm our suspicions with actual stats. Here they are...

"Public Records PRRU 2022-0181 KOLD News 13 has requested statistics regarding the number of fatal traffic collisions, homicide incidents (excluding Officer-Involved shootings), and incidents robberies in Tucson over the last six years. All crime incident data were extracted from January 1, 2016, through December 31, 2021. Table 1 shows the total number of fatal collisions, homicide incidents, and robbery incidents from January 1, 2016, through December 31, 2021, broken down by year. Please note that the number of incidents does not account for the total number of fatalities in the collision or in a particular homicide."

These are the numbers we received.

**Please note: this was sent to us in a format that I was not able to directly copy to the website. When I figure out how to post it I will. Until then, these are most of the numbers we asked for. We're still waiting for the staffing numbers for the Magnus years.

*The numbers do not lie. The deaths in both categories went up every year with the exception of a single year for homicides and a single year for traffic fatalities. In 2021 traffic deaths went down by 1 death and homicides went down by 6 in 2019 before roaring back in Chief Magnus's final 2 years including a record setting 86 homicides in 2021!)*

"Table 1: City of Tucson Fatal Collisions, Homicide Incidents and Robberies, 2016 through 2021. "

Fatal Traffic Collisions

2016- 48

2017- 61

2018- 65

2019- 80

2020- 89

2021-88

Homicides

2016- 35

2017- 45

2018- 56

2019- 47

2020- 56

2021- 83

"Table 2: City of Tucson Fatal Injuries from Traffic Collisions and Homicide Victims, 2016 through 2021."

Fatal Traffic Collisions

2016- 51

2017- 61

2018- 65

2019- 80

2020- 89

2021- 88

Homicides

2016- 35

2017- 47

2018- 53

2019- 47

2020- 65

2021- 86

As you will soon see, KOLD (Channel 13) made the same request and we were provided a copy of the results. Hopefully, they will be like the rest of Tucson's "media" and throw out a hard-hitting investigation of Chief Chris Magnus and his long list of failures! **Sarcasm Intended**

Let's get back to the question we asked in the previous segment: Did any of this stuff work? Even though we are still waiting for the staffing numbers to come in, we are going to provide an answer to this question. No, nothing that he tried worked. In fact, we're going to take it a step further and say that Chief Chris Magnus was an unmitigated failure and he sucked at leading this police department in making Tucson a safer place.

We feel VERY comfortable calling this experiment a failure.

The Chief Magnus Experiment

Welcome Message from Chief Magnus

Did Any of This Stuff Work?

Scoreboard