During July, in a series of speeches, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard spoke eloquently and compassionately about the problems of young African-American men. He talked about taking young men “13, 14 and 15 by the scruff of their necks and dragging them away from the violence,” adding, “When kids act up we need community, church, school and neighborhood leaders to get involved and help address the problem.”
Well, the crime-fighting-plan Mayor Ballard announced last week, in a speech in the bad acoustics and stifling atmosphere of the Indianapolis Old City Hall Rotunda, was bold alright. Stop crime in 2021; not 2015.
On Just Tellin’ It’s 20th anniversary, here’s what I support in the Mayor’s plan, the critical issues it fails to address and the major failures of the initiative.
More police on our streets
I strongly support adding more sworn officers to our police department, but Ballard’s plan to add just 280 is woefully insufficient. A sizable percentage of IMPD officers, as much as 40 percent of the department, are eligible to retire today. So, to see the worth of Ballard’s plan you can’t look at the gross, but at the net number of officers added.
Ballard’s plan adds 280 officers between now and 2018. The city estimates 168 officers will retire during that time. That means IMPD would only increase by 112 officers. Not enough to take a serious bite out of crime and really implement true community policing.
If we’re going to grow IMPD, the net increase must be far larger than Ballard proposes.
I do agree that more cops should be funded by increasing the public safety income tax. The burden of fighting crime must be shared by everyone in our city/county.
I also support changing state law to make those working in Marion County, but living outside, pay a small portion of their county income tax to support public safety here.
The Mayor’s proposal to raise the income tax 9.3 percent or 15 cents on the dollar for public safety must be extremely specific as to where the money is going.
Remember, Bart Peterson raised the income tax 65 percent to pay for more police. Unfortunately, those new cops never made it on the streets because of Ballard’s boneheaded decision to wreck a Justice Department minority hiring consent decree. It caused IMPD to go four years without adding new officers.
Which begs the question, where did those extra public safety income tax dollars go? They didn’t go for more police? Mayor Ballard has never given an accounting of those dollars.
It’s damn time he does!
The pre-school and 4-year-olds plan
Mayor Ballard’s plan to increase quality pre-school options in Indianapolis will have an impact on fighting crime – in 2021 to 2025 when those four year olds reach their middle school and teen years. This component of Ballard’s plan doesn’t do a damn thing about taking real bites out of crime in the next three to five years.
The Mayor’s pre-school proposal wasn’t designed to help the 34 percent of the city’s four year olds who are African-American or the 17.5 percent who’re Hispanic. The biggest cheerleaders of the plan are whites; Blacks have been coolly silent.
Deputy Mayor for Education Jason Kloth documented the Mayor’s pre-school plan in a fancy 16-page document, with lots of graphs and pictures, but the document contains some sloppy scholarship. Like numerous citations to articles in an agricultural economics journal, what does it know about urban youth issues?
More odious is funding this by eliminating the local homestead property tax credit. Unlike the income tax increase, only a portion of county taxpayers will pay for the education part of Ballard’s plan. Renters and businesses are exempt. Homeowners with property assessed at $150,000 or less will pay the tax; with disproportionate impact on people in older neighborhoods and senior citizen homeowners.
It’s sinfully unfair for seniors and working class homeowners to be the only ones paying to educate four year olds.
Also, our schools will lose upward of $3 million desperately needed for transportation and debt service costs, to pay for Ballard’s pre-school plan.
Pre-school expansion is a great idea, but Ballard’s funding mechanism is discriminatory, unfair and somewhat obscene.
No plan to help at-risk-youth now?
The Mayor’s speech contained NO concrete proposals for increasing funding, from any sources, on positive programs to deal with at-risk teens and young adults to deter from crime in the here and now.
Afterwards, some key members of the Ten Point Coalition who attended the speech were stunned, crestfallen and a bit peeved. But, they’ve since rallied to endorse the Mayor’s plan.
It’s wickedly appalling that Mayor Ballard offered absolutely NOTHING in his crime fighting plan to alleviate the serious lack of real funding that keeps community, school, church and neighborhood programs, that help teens and young adults from having real impact.
These programs don’t necessarily need tax dollars. I’m stunned Ballard didn’t announce the launch of a massive investment by Indianapolis businesses and foundations, at the same time as his pre-school plan – say $24 million over three years – to really attack this.
When Ballard took office, there was $5 million annually, funded by Peterson’s income tax increase, available for so-called “Community Crime Prevention Grants.” Ballard felt crime is so serious that he cut the funding back to just $2 million yearly. The rest of the money went who knows where.
Mayor Ballard’s anti-crime and pre-school plan wasn’t created to benefit African-Americans. It was designed to pacify, calm and reassure jittery whites that the Mayor, who’s sat on the sidelines of public safety, is really serious now.
IF, Ballard’s plan was designed to help African-Americans, why did he do this?
The day before it was announced, personal briefings on the plan by Deputy Mayors and others were given to every major Indianapolis media; even specialized websites reporting on education were included.
Excluded? Minority media! Deliberately. Maliciously. Callously. Many Indy media outlets, where the majority of readers and listeners are African-American and Hispanic was shut out!
So, how can I and my community take this plan seriously, when the community most impacted, was shut out; apartheid style?
See ‘ya next week!
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
