ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

A convicted sex offender was arrested Wednesday night on charges of sexual assault.

Tucson police officers caught Gerardo Lopez, 54, as he was assaulting a 34-year-old woman in a desert area northwest of Interstate 10 at South Park Avenue, said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a department spokesman.

Lopez, a level 3 sex offender, was convicted of attempted sexual conduct with a minor stemming from an incident in 1986, according to an online search of state corrections and sex offender data.

Lopez lives near the area where the incident took place, according to state sex offender records.

Pacheco said that police received a 911 call from a cell phone about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday. He said operator could hear the sounds of a woman being assaulted and dispatched patrol officers to search the area near the interchange.

Police found Lopez sexually assaulting the woman within minutes, Pacheco said.

The woman told detectives that she was walking through the desert when Lopez confronted her. She managed to call 911 but was not able to speak to the operator.

Lopez has been charged with three counts of sexual assault, one count of sexual abuse and one count of kidnapping.

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

A Tucson police captain has been named an assistant chief, filling the slot left open when Roberto Villaseñor was sworn in as police chief last week.

Terry Rozema, a 22-year veteran of the Tucson Police Department, will be in charge of the Support Services Bureau, which includes the homeland security and traffic enforcement sections of the department, as well as the SWAT team.

The bureau’s former head, Assistant Chief Kathleen Robinson, will take over Villaseñor’s duties running the Investigative Services Bureau, which includes the special investigations, property crimes and forensic divisions.

She also will oversee the violent crimes section, the Counter Narcotics Alliance and the gang unit.

Before his promotion, Rozema ran TPD’s portion of the multi-agency Counter Narcotics Alliance.

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

Two homes were destroyed Monday afternoon in unrelated fires that began outside the houses before moving into the buildings.

Tucson Fire Capt. Tricia Tracy said the fires left a family of six and a couple without places to live. The American Red Cross is providing shelter to them.

In the first blaze, a woman called 911 to report a fire at her West Side home, then left the scene to pick up a child from school, Tracy said in a news release.

Tracy said a smoke detector sounded shortly after noon as the woman was getting ready to leave the home in the 2200 block of South Hiram Banks Court, near South Mission Road and West Ajo Way.

Neighbors also called 911 to report that the fire was in the carport and that an elderly woman and some small children might be inside.

Firefighters arrived minutes later to find the carport and two vehicles burning. Smoke and flames were also coming through the windows in the front of the home.

A quick search revealed that nobody was in the house, Tracy said.

The blaze caused an estimated $150,000 of damage, destroying the vehicles and the home where the woman lived with five others, including three children.

Tracy said it is important that families plan escape routes from a home in case of fire and designate a meeting place in a safe area away from the building.

Tracy said family members should stay at the meeting spot until firefighters arrive to tell rescuers if any people or animals remain inside, and where they may be located.

The cause of the fire is under investigation but Tracy said it appears it have started in the carport.

The second blaze, which started about 2 p.m. was caused by a faulty electrical panel on the back porch of a home in the 3200 block of South Harrison Road.

A man and a woman were home at the time of the fire. They heard a loud noise coming from the back of the house followed by a smoke alarm going off.

Firefighters responding to 911 calls from the couple and neighbors found the porch and interior of the home ablaze.

The fire caused about $200,000 of damage, Tracy said.

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

A 2-year-old girl nearly drowned in a bathtub Tuesday afternoon on the Southeast Side, authorities said.

Tucson Fire Capt. Tricia Tracy said the girl was transported by helicopter to an area hospital, but she did not know the girl’s condition.

The incident was reported about 4:30 p.m. at a home in the 7000 block of East Fair Meadows Loop, near the South Kolb Road interchange on Interstate 10.

Tracy said the mother, who has two other children, left the child unattended for less than a minute.

“There are lots of things a child can drown in aside from a swimming pool or a hot tub,” Tracy said. “A child can drown in as little as an inch of water.”

ERIC SAGARA

and MARY BUSTAMANTE

news@tucsoncitizen.com

A group of local, state and federal politicians demanded an apology from Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for statements regarding schools checking the citizenship of students.

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva was among the politicians – all Democrats – to sign a letter criticizing Dupnik’s statements.

“It is wrong to force teachers and school administrators to become immigration officers,” the letter said.

Dupnik, a Democrat, said at a news conference last week that 40 percent of the students in the Sunnyside Unified School District were in the country illegally and that the South, Southwest and West sides had high crime rates linked to illegal immigration.

“These false charges are inflammatory and prejudicial,” the letter stated. “Your comments only further divide our community and debase a large part of the population.

“The Pima County electorate trusted you to protect and serve our community, not to humiliate and instill fear,” the letter said. “Every child is entitled to an education regardless of race, religion, sexual orientation and status.”

Dupnik called last week’s conference to clarify comments he made during a hearing on border violence held by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last month.

Dupnik, who could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon, stressed last week that his statements were his opinion only. He said he knew they would be “divisive.”

He suggested that a Supreme Court ruling that forbid schools from checking the citizenship of students should be challenged, saying that it would heighten border security if the ruling was overturned.

Adelita Grijalva, a Tucson Unified School District board member, said, “I think the comments he made were simply wrong, inflammatory and egregious.

“We talk about (Maricopa County) Sheriff Joe Arpaio and say that we’re happy we don’t have a sheriff like that,” she said. “If this is the way (Sheriff Dupnik) felt, I wish he would have made those statements a year ago when he was running for re-election, and then we could have decided if that’s the type of person we wanted for sheriff.”

Grijalva said she was eager to hear Dupnik’s response because she thought his statements were “really out of character from (the) whole time he has been sheriff. I’m still unclear what the motive was.”

When he said Sunnyside had about 40 percent illegal immigrants, “how would he even know that? Sunnyside doesn’t know because it doesn’t ask.”

Eva Dong, a Sunnyside Unified School District board member for more than 10 years, said she signed the letter because she was shocked and disappointed with Dupnik’s comments.

She said she didn’t like Dupnik putting Sunnyside into a position of law enforcement against immigrants, which, she added, is against the law.

“And I’d like to know the ‘credible’ source he has that said that 40 percent of Sunnyside students are illegal immigrants,” she said.

“The large majority of our community is not involved in crime. I was in shock when I heard the things he said. That he would lump us into a category of high crime is not right,” she said.

“We’ve worked hard this year to try to remove those images. We have businesses and the university working with us to be successful,” Dong said. “You work at it and work at it and work at it, and bang, someone comes and shoots you down. It’s just very hurtful.”

Dong, who works at the Pima County Juvenile Court Center in the CAPE program, which educates children incarcerated there, also took offense at Dupnik equating illegal immigrants with crime.

Even at the center, “the majority of kids there are not illegal immigrants,” she said. “They are very, very few.”

Elected officials who signed the letter to Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

Richard Elías, chairman of the Board of Supervisors

Regina Romero, Tucson Ward 1 Councilwoman

Adelita Grijalva, board member of the Tucson Unified School District

Eva Dong, board member for the Sunnyside Unified School District

State Rep. Daniel Patterson, D-Tucson

State Rep. Matt Heinz, D-Tucson

State Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Tucson

State Sen. Jorge Luis Garcia, D-Tucson

State Rep. Olivia Cajero Bedford, D-Tucson

State Rep. Phil Lopes, D-Tucson

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz.

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

Assistant Police Chief Roberto Villaseñor apparently will inherit a department facing budget cutbacks in a city combating an increase in violent and drug-related crimes.

City Manager Mike Letcher announced that Villaseñor was his selection as the next police chief in an internal city memo Friday afternoon.

The City Council will vote on the selection Tuesday during its regular meeting. Letcher appoints the police chief, but council approval is required before Villaseñor can take up his new position May 8.

Villaseñor conceded at a news conference that he is nervous about taking on the post during tough economic times, but said he also is excited.

“I never thought that for sure I would end up here, but I will say for the past 10 years I’ve had some thoughts,” he said Friday. “My whole career has prepared me for this.

“I’ve served in every section of this department and I’ve commanded every bureau of this department,” he said. “I now want the opportunity to use those skills and experiences to run the agency.”

This was the second search for a police chief since Richard Miranda retired from the job in June. Interim Chief Kermit Miller has run the department since then.

City officials conducted a nationwide search late last year and narrowed a list of applicants to four finalists before abandoning the process in March in favor of a new search limited to Tucson Police Department employees.

Villaseñor, a third-generation Tucsonan, has spent his entire career in the department, the past nine years as an assistant chief.

He has been a SWAT commander and headed the internal affairs unit.

Villaseñor developed and initiated the police community-based policing initiative and oversaw the police response to riots on Fourth Avenue following the 1997 and 2001 NCAA championship basketball games involving the Arizona Wildcats.

He was named Officer of the Year by the department in 1996, awarded the department Medal of Merit three times and received the department’s Distinguished Medal of Service.

“I think it’s a tremendous step from even an assistant chief up to the chief of police,” Villaseñor said. “I’ll be honest: As an assistant chief it was nice having that buffer there and now I am that buffer.”

The 29-year veteran of the department said he plans changes and will strive to improve the department’s reputation.

“I think we enjoy the reputation as one of the finest agencies in the country, but if you start to say ‘OK, we’ve arrived, we’re here and that’s good,’ you don’t improve and you don’t grow,” he said. “That’s why I need to set for myself the standard that we need to improve.”

Villaseñor has the support of the Tucson Police Officers Association and Mayor Bob Walkup.

Walkup said he was encouraged to hear that Villaseñor planned to bring change to the growing department.

“We have to change to stay up with changing conditions,” Walkup said.

Criminals are constantly using new tactics and the department needs to adapt to address those changes, Walkup said.

Police union President Larry Lopez said the association’s decision to endorse Villaseñor was a “clear-cut” one.

The nod came Friday morning after Tucson police Capt. Brett Klein was eliminated from consideration and hours before Villaseñor’s appointment was announced.

Lopez said the association based its decision on interviews it had with Klein, Villaseñor and the third candidate – Assistant Chief John Leavitt – and on officers’ experience of working with all three on a day-to-day basis.

“We knew their abilities,” Lopez said of the candidates. “We were completely familiar with them.”

Beki Quintero, president of the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association, said she was pleased with the choice.

“I know (Villaseñor) is very hands on, very in tune with the people and he listens,” Quintero said. “He knows our issues and (we) think he is very open to listening to us.

“I’m confident he is going to do a great job,” she said.

Ronni Kotwica, president of the Midtown Palo Verde Neighborhood Association, told the Citizen she sat on a panel that interviewed the candidates Thursday afternoon and saw both weakness and strength in all three finalists.

“Obviously we had a very small say in what ultimately transpired,” she said. “The community committee was doing the interviews as a community group. And, as I said, each had their strong points, and the powers that be are the ones that ultimately made the decision.

“I wish him the best and I’m sure he knows he has strong community leaders he is going to have to listen to,” she said. “He is sensitive to the needs of the neighborhoods, and I am sure he will be accepting the advice he is offered.”

Villaseñor said the department would continue an aggressive approach to combating violent and drug-related crimes.

Last year the department investigated a record 74 homicides.

Villaseñor also spoke of using laws preventing felons from possessing guns to bring charges against dangerous criminals and crack down on gun-related crimes.

Crime will not be Villaseñor’s only challenge; the city faces one of its leanest budget years.

Lopez said the department would face operational-budget cuts while striving to meet a staffing goal of 2.4 officers for every 1,000 residents.

“It’s going to be a challenge and we have hard times ahead of us,” Lopez said. “It’s our hope that we move along and continue to grow as the city grows.”

Villaseñor agreed.

“I think that obviously right now that that is something that has taken a little bit of a back seat with the economic situation that we’re facing,” he said. “We will continue to go towards that goal, but it will be a while before we get there. We will work with the resources that we have.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the federal economic stimulus law, may be a source of funding for more officers and support personnel including crime scene specialists, he said.

“It’s a wide spectrum approach to it where it’s not just always going to cops, but also recognizing the importance of support personnel to free police officers up to go back to their basic function,” he said in an interview with the Citizen. “A lot of cops’ time is spent sitting around and waiting for crime scene (technicians) or sitting around and waiting for evidence (to be gathered). If we can get more personnel of that type, we can get the cops back out quicker.”

Miranda, now an assistant city manager, said Villaseñor’s experience during challenging times will help him in his new duties.

The late 1990s and early 2000s were marred by internal strife stemming from the drunken-driving-related crash of a high-ranking officer, the arrest and dismissal of several other officers and the department’s handling of the riots on Fourth Avenue.

“I think that the challenges that we faced in the ’90s were internal in terms of the lack of communication,” Miranda said. “He’s been forced to learn that he is going to have to communicate with his people, he’s going to have to communicate with the public and he’s going to have to resolve a lot of those issues himself.”

Miranda said Villaseñor is on the brink of a massive undertaking.

“I have to reflect back on my first year and what it was like and there was a lot of eye-openings,” Miranda said. “The challenges that he is going to face is the enormity of the job. The job requires someone to be paying attention to the community 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“It’s not until you have that badge on that shirt that you realize that you are responsible for the entire public safety of this community, and that’s a wake-up call,” he said.

Miranda said Villaseñor also will realize that he is responsible for the officers who serve under him, referring to the shooting deaths of Officer Erik Hite last year and Officer Patrick Hardesty in 2003.

“I hope he never has to go through it, because seeing one of your officers go down is probably one of the worst things a police chief can go through,” he said. “Those kinds of thoughts about the enormity of the job are going to be presented to him during the next few days.”

Citizen Staff Writer Alan Fischer contributed to this article.

Villaseñor bio

• Age: 50

• Hired by TPD: 1980

• Education: Master’s of education, Northern Arizona University

• TPD history: Command experience includes investigative services bureau, administrative services bureau, field services bureau, support services bureau, West division, management information division, field support division, anti-narcotics squad, Midtown operations division, Office of Professional Standards, hostage negotiations.

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said his idea has merit, but he will not press Arizona to challenge a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that makes it illegal for schools to check students’ citizenship.

Still, Dupnik said, checking citizenship when students enroll would remove a flaw in the nation’s border security and could deter immigrants from crossing the border illegally.

Such a move would eliminate some of the area’s social woes, he said, adding that the South, Southwest and West sides of Tucson have prominent social problems that can be attributed to illegal immigration.

Dupnik, citing unnamed sources, pointed specifically to the Sunnyside Unified School District, where he said as many as 40 percent of the students are illegal immigrants.

Sunnyside district spokeswoman Monique Soria said that “the district, by law, does not ask for legal status, and we do not have data on that.

“We would be breaking the law if we did ask,” she said.

Failing schools, high dropout rates and gang affiliation seem to be high in those areas, Dupnik said.

“Sunnyside is, I think, the area where the problem is most acute,” he said.

Dupnik stressed that he is not encouraging school districts to break the law.

Dupnik’s opinion arose when he attended a hearing on border violence held by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, he said.

“I just brought up an issue that was not being dealt with that I felt should be dealt with,” Dupnik said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s a subject that nobody wants to talk about,” he said. “I merely aired an idea. I’m not on a platform. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a strategy.”

Dupnik said he will not conduct immigration sweeps at area schools.

“I find that thought repulsive and repugnant,” he said.

Nor will the Sheriff’s Department stage similar sweeps anywhere in the community, he said.

“We will never do that as long as I am sheriff here.”

Dupnik: Citizenship checks of students would ease social woes

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

Nearly two decades of mystery and intrigue may be drawing to a close with the arrest of a man suspected of killing a local imam.

Calgary Police Services in Canada arrested Glen Cusford Francis, a 52-year-old citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, on Tuesday on suspicion of killing 55-year-old Rashad Khalifa, according to a news release issued by the Tucson Police Department.

On Jan. 31, 1990, Khalifa was found stabbed to death in the kitchen of the Masjid of Tucson, the mosque where he worked. The mosque is at East Sixth Street and North Euclid Avenue.

Khalifa had gained international attention for his computer analysis of the Koran and his claims that two verses were written by Satan, not God.

Police say Khalifa had been receiving death threats in the months leading up to his killing because of his controversial interpretation, and authorities in Colorado uncovered a plot to kill him.

According to Tucson Citizen archives, seven people were indicted in Colorado on charges of conspiracy to kill Khalifa.

All seven were believed to be members of FUQRA, a Muslim extremist group that had been tied to terrorist activities.

The plot was uncovered by police in Colorado Springs when they found explosives in a locker in 1989 while investigating a burglary.

Notes on how to kill Khalifa, diagrams and photos of the mosque, as well as planned escape routes, were found by detectives, archives show.

Authorities told Khalifa of the plot but four months later he was found dead in Tucson.

At least six of the seven men were convicted of charges related to the conspiracy.

The seventh, Edward Flinton, a citizen of Pakistan, fled before being arrested in 1996, according to Citizen archives.

It is not clear if Flinton was convicted and none of the men is believed to have actually stabbed Khalifa.

TPD spokesman Sgt. Fabian Pacheco said he was unaware of the Colorado arrests but would speak to homicide detectives about it.

Investigators in Tucson learned that a man calling himself Benjamin Phillips arrived at the mosque in January 1990 to study Islam under Khalifa, the TPD news release said.

It said local detectives used information obtained from family members in Georgia and in Canada, along with fingerprints found in Phillips’ Tucson apartment, to confirm that Phillips and Francis were the same man.

Francis was not seen in Tucson following the slaying and authorities learned that he fled the country the following year before returning in 1994, the news release said.

The FBI interviewed Francis in 1994 in Texas where he went by the name of Joseph Wall and denied ever being in Tucson, the news release said.

TPD’s cold case unit began working on the case in 2006 and in December last year, was able to use DNA testing on forensic evidence from the crime scene to tie Francis to the killing, the news release said.

TPD investigators worked with the Pima County Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Marshals Service and Canadian authorities to obtain a provisional arrest warrant for first-degree murder with a $1 million bond for Francis.

Man arrested in ’90 slaying of controversial religious leader at local mosque

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

A federal judge ruled that Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System violated federal law by discriminating against people who sought in-home care from the state’s Medicaid program.

U.S. District Court Judge Earl Carroll’s ruling Friday upholds an injunction that he imposed in 2004 mandating that the state must provide all critical services without gaps in coverage.

It stems from a class action lawsuit filed by the Arizona Center for Disability Law in 2000 that affects nearly 48,000 Arizonans with disabilities, including more than 7,000 in Pima County.

Jennifer Nye, a staff attorney with the center, said the state program would approve the long-term care services but did not monitor them to make sure patients were actually receiving care.

AHCCCS Director Anthony Rodgers, in a written statement, said he was “disappointed” with the decision.

Rodgers said the class action suit was based on “isolated cases from 1998 to 2001″ and does not reflect changes that have been made since then.

AHCCCS has increased its oversight and response to gaps in critical services as well as provided the court with monthly reports, Rodgers’ statement said..

The injunction’s definition of critical services included assistance with bathing, toileting, dressing, feeding and other daily needs and required that any gaps in coverage be filled within two hours.

The injunction also called for a system of backup staff to fill in for nurses and other home care providers whenever those gaps occurred.

The state appealed the decision and in 2007 the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a portion of Carroll’s ruling and overturned a portion.

The court sent the case back to Carroll to determine if Arizona violated the Medicaid Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and to review the terms of the injunction.

Carroll’s ruling on Friday determined that the state did violate the laws and a hearing has been set for June 1 to determine if the injunction will be extended beyond June 30.

Judge rules AHCCCS violated rules on in-home care

ERIC SAGARA

esagara@tucsoncitizen.com

Political activist John Kromko confirmed Friday evening that he has been charged with identity theft and forgery connected to nominating petitions he filed in an unsuccessful bid for a state House seat last year.

Kromko, 68, ran unsuccessfully against Phil Lopes and Olivia Cajero Bedford in the Democratic primary for the two state House of Representative seats in District 27.

Kromko said he has been charged with nine counts each of forgery and identity theft and one count of fraudulent schemes.

According to a copy of the complaint filed by the Pima County Attorney’s Office and provided by Kromko, he is accused of stealing the identities of 29 different people.

The charges stem from an investigation of his nominating petitions, he said.

“I knew that there was some concern about this a long time ago, but I thought it was all taken care of,” he said. “Apparently there are . . . signatures on my petition that they say that I wrote but I didn’t.”

A representative of the County Attorney’s Office could not be reached Friday evening.

“I needed 400 signatures and I had almost 800,” Kromko said. “It doesn’t make sense that I would bother to do that because I had so many signatures and as far as I can tell, they were all good.

“I can’t imagine that I would get convicted on this but you never would know, I guess.”

Kromko has been active in local politics for 40 years and served in the state Legislature from 1976-1990.