“Mayor Greg Ballard isn’t known as a hands-on leader. Simply setting a vision won’t work on crime. It’s time for Ballard to roll up his sleeves, put aside partisanship and lead on the issue he promised five years ago would be ‘Job One.’”
I wish those were my words. They aren’t. They belong to this week’s editorial in the Indianapolis Business Journal. The words reflect the cold reality in America’s 11th largest city.
For six years Mayor Ballard loudly bragged that Indy’s crime was declining; that especially homicides were down.
Now Ballard has been smacked upside the head that Indy’s in the midst of a sharp murder surge. With 80 homicides at this column’s deadline, and with 46 percent of the year left, Indy could exceed the record 150 murders set in 2006. Though 1998 was the bloodiest year for African-American murders in Indianapolis as 119 died.
In fact, the 1990 decade was the bloodiest for African-American murders with over 100 killings yearly in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 1998. In the record killing spree of 2006, 94 Blacks were murdered.
This year’s murder surge is sudden. Just five years ago, in 2009, Indy had a low of 60 Black homicides; a figure not reached since the 1980s.
Indy’s mainstream media missed the murder surge’s onset. But they lurched into uninformed overdrive after the Fourth of July killing of a 16-year-old during the downtown fireworks. In six days that followed, 10 persons were shot around Indy; five dying.
Though a 16-year-old was murdered July 4th, persons under 18 represent a fraction of this year’s murders.
The bulk of Black murder victims and perpetrators are males 18 to 34. Another group responsible for some violence is Black male teens 10 to 17.
Last week Mayor Ballard dealt with the rising crime and violence with more badly handled magician tricks. He had Public Safety Director Troy Riggs and IMPD Chief Rick Hite announce they were putting 100-plus more cops on the street. Nearly all these officers weren’t riding desks. They were already in the streets building trust and relationships with the community.
Ballard’s “more cops” shows Ballard’s lack of understanding of how to run an increasingly complex city. It shows that Ballard’s stubborn insistence that Indy, alone of all Indiana major cities, could survive tax caps has now reaped the whirlwind of fiscal mess.
But back to Indy’s rising violence. The sad truth is in cities from Houston to Chicago to Philadelphia, urban violence is fueled primarily by Black men aged 18 to 34. And Black male teens 10 to 17 are potentially the next violence prone age cohort.
Unfortunately Indy’s leaders, from Ballard to the business and civic community, have a fundamental ignorance of Indy’s changing demography.
We have fewer cops on our streets while Indy’s population has risen 121,818 since 1990; Black population growing 99,266 or 58.5 percent.
Another stunning stat, the number of Indy’s Black males aged 18 to 24 is up 44.8 percent since 1990; Black males 25 to 34 up 15.8 percent; and Black male teens 10 to 17 has risen 53.3 percent since 1990.
Overall there are 12,388 more Black males aged 10 to 34 in Indy today than in 1990.
Unfortunately despite that growth, unemployment in those age groups is at astronomical levels. Jobs for Black teens nearly non-existent. Programs serving young Black males in Indy have decreased, not increased during the same period.
In late 2006, during Indy’s last murder surge, then Mayor Bart Peterson convened a broad cross section of Indy’s best minds to devise strategies to engage youth and reduce violence.
The Community Crime Correction Task Force, headed by Bill Shrewsbury and IUPUI’s Dr. Jerry Bepko came up with a number of recommendations in the area of neighborhoods, mentoring, families, health, youth engagement and working with ex-offenders. The task force also recommended continued work by the Indianapolis Violence Reduction Partnership in engaging gang members. And called for creation of a crime prevention fund.
Sadly, Peterson and city leaders didn’t move fast enough on the task force recommendations.
When Ballard took office he and then Public Safety Director Scott Newman, seeing murders sharply start to decline, ignored the Peterson commission’s recommendations. Ballard allowed the violence reduction partnership to atrophy, eliminating an agency that coordinated the statistics and analyzed countywide crime trends, including homicides.
That inertia, community leader inaction, plus increased population now has Indy paying the price.
Today, Indianapolis is a city where large numbers of youth live in households below the poverty level; but the United Way and other funders have put their funding priorities on pre-school youth; ignoring agencies that work with older youth and teens.
Today, Indianapolis is a city where summer jobs for youth are a dirty word in the business community.
Today, Indianapolis is a city that doesn’t have enough cops to declare a jihad against the drug trade in Indy’s neighborhoods. The drug trade that seduces some families into accepting ill-gotten gains while silently tolerating their children hiding high caliber automatic weapons inside their homes.
Today, Indianapolis is talking about condemning and prosecuting parents for the sins of their children, but won’t provide resources and help for those parents who want and need help to deal with their incorrigible children.
Sixteen years ago, during 1997’s murder surge, this column said: “As numerous African-American neighborhoods in Indianapolis live in fear of indiscriminate, senseless murders and shootings; the sickening sounds of silence continues to emanate from the overall leadership of this city in general and Indianapolis Black leadership in particular.
It’s time that the entire political, civic and business leadership of Indianapolis demands that what’s working in other major American cities to reduce homicides be tried here.”
The senseless murders of Blacks in Black communities from Sanford, Fla., to Indianapolis must end.
See ‘ya next week.
You can email comments to Amos Brown at acbrown@aol.com.
