FOP President Rick Snyder says “a spirit of evil” has fallen over the city of Indianapolis.
Sunday morning, six people were murdered at a residence on the east side in what Indianapolis Metro Police Dept. Chief Randal Taylor called the city’s “largest mass shooting in more than a decade.”
IMPD arrested a person of interest in the crime Monday; however, the person’s name and picture were not released because the suspect is a minor.
“Evil follows the path of least resistance,” Snyder told the Hammer and Nigel Show Monday. “And it’s overwhelming our city because we are not putting up a resistance to it as a community.”
Synder said the blame for the skyrocketing murder rate in Indianapolis starts at the top.
“We have been literally begging our city’s leadership to address the deficiencies in our criminal justice system,” said Snyder. “And we could make progress on that front if we could get honest about what’s happening and address those fractures in the system on a practical level.”
He continued: “We need to stop this revolving door of criminal justice in which we are arresting and re-arresting convicted repeat and violent offenders. It won’t solve all the problems, but it’s certainly one step in the right direction.”
Synder also suggested it was time to re-establish the IMPD Staffing Commission, a commission that was designed to address a severe staff shortage in the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
“Seven years ago, the IMPD was struggling with a 300-400 officer shortage,” explained Snyder. “So we established a commission that took a non-partisan approach to address the issue.”
As a result of that commission, the Indianapolis City-County Council unanimously approved an increase in the public safety tax. It was signed into law by Mayor Greg Ballard in 2014.
Synder told the Hammer and Nigel Show that the Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police called for the city to establish a commission to take a similar approach to deficiencies in Indiana’s criminal justice system.
“The police can’t get ahead of the violence because the city is letting convicted offenders out as fast as we’re putting them in,” said Snyder. “If we close that revolving door as a stop-gap measure, it would buy [the police] the time to begin addressing the root causes of that violence.”
Snyder bristled at Mayor Joe Hogsett’s suggestion that “economic and personal uncertainty due to a global pandemic” was partly to blame for Sunday’s mass shooting.
“COVID does not cause crime,” said Synder. “Poverty does not cause crime. [Lack of] education does not cause crime. Those might be contributing factors, but we need to get to the heart of what causes a person to ultimately cross the threshold and take another person’s life. We have to address that question and answer it honestly and as a community or the violence will continue to occur.”
Click the link below to hear Hammer and Nigel’s full interview with FOP President Rick Snyder.
https://omny.fm/shows/hammer-and-nigel-show/rick-snyder-president-of-fop-lodge-86-talks-about
