Reaction to Prop 200 getting thumbs down from voters

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Lupita Murillo - View Bio

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One of the most controversial issues in Tucson was Proposition-200, and by preliminary numbers, voters overwhelmingly rejected it. If Prop 200 - "Public Safety First" had passed, it would have set a minimum staffing level of 2.4 police officers per 1,000 city residents. It would have also required a staff increase in the fire department.
So what kind of impact will this have?
Fire captain Brian Delfs says, "The one good thing that has come out of this entire campaign is that the city council and the citizens of this community now understand it's the flip of the coin whether they are going to have an adequate public safety response."
Delfs is disappointed in the results but says they will continue to do their job with the staffing they have. Right now, 60-percent of the time they answer calls within four minutes; the national mandate is to do it 90-percent of the time.
"The four-minute response time is just as important as it ever was," says Capt. Delfs. "The fire doubles in size, every 60 seconds and a structure is likely to collapse after only seven minutes of fire involvement. The human brain begins to die in four to six minutes without oxygen."
Larry Lopez represents the Tucson Police Officers Association, and he says, "We're going to continue to be professional, continue to do our jobs to the best of our ability, that's not going to change...at this point, do more with less."
Something else that's not going to change - not enough police or fire fighters to answer calls as fast as national standards call for.
"There's going to be times when victims of crimes will have to wait a number of hours to receive a police response, there's going to be time where people call 911 for medical services and the firefighters are going to get there eight, nine, 10 minutes later," says Lopez.
Mayor Bob Walkup says he will ask the council to reaffirm its policy that will add police and fire as money is available.
But in today's economy, it's not clear when that will happen.