INDIANAPOLIS — Over halfway through the calendar year 2022 and Indianapolis has reached over 100 homicides on the year, says IMPD.
As of Monday, June 27th, Indianapolis has had 103 people killed as a result of a homicide, which is only slightly lower than at this point in 2021 when the Capitol City had seen 113 people killed.
Though it’s a trend in the downward direction leaders with the Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition, such as Rev. Charles Harrison, are still concerned about how small that reduction is, given the city’s new initiatives on fighting crime rolled out over the last year.
“It looks like we’re going to hit 200 homicides again for the third year in a row unless we see some major reductions in violent crime over the next six months,” Harrison said to Indy Politics.
Much of the problem as well is also non-fatal shootings, which are also down this year compared to last year. To date, there have been 324 people hurt in shootings who have survived in 2022. Last year at this point 358 people had been the victim of a non-fatal shooting.
Harrison said despite the slight decline, many residents in Indianapolis are feeling demoralized when it comes to violent crime.
“They don’t think much can be done by the violence,” Harrison said. “The people who are committing the violence, there doesn’t seem to be any accountability.”
Harrison points to what has essentially become the go-to cliche in describing the problem he says is with repeat violent offenders. He said the “revolving door” of criminals ending up right back out on the streets soon after being arrested is a big reason for why it’s been so tough to solve the issues with crime.
“We’re not surprised normally when we go to a scene and we hear who the victim was or we hear people talk about who was involved,” he said. “It’s typically the same people, who we call ‘hot people’, in these neighborhoods where we see high levels of violence. The same people who do it year over year.”
In trying to address that issue, the Indiana General Assembly passed a law this past session which was upheld this week by a judge, that organizations like The Bail Project will have restrictions on helping criminals make bail. The Bail Project sued to say the state legislature could not restrict them from operating in certain Indiana counties, but the judge decided otherwise and dismissed the lawsuit.
Harrison is sticking with his philosophy that the city needs to better partner with organizations like Indy Ten Point for a more grassroots effort in stopping crime before it happens.
