INDIANAPOLIS — City leaders are reflecting on the past year's efforts to reduce gun violence in Indianapolis.
"I'm ready to shoot it up, burn it down, I'm gonna kill everybody."
Those are the words Marvin Smith said he hears sometimes over the phone, working as one of the city's 38 Peacemakers, a program that began last January aimed at reducing gun violence in Indianapolis.
"I have many stories like that to where we have stopped crimes from actually happening," Smith told the city's Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee Wednesday night.
Smith is one of 15 life coaches who help those in the program choose a path other than violence by connecting them to resources like a job, mental health counseling or a place to live.
Right now, there are 66 people taking part in the program, people who got involved after one of the program's outreach workers, like Della Brown, convinced them to participate.
"We're just out there constantly, trying to figure out what we can do to engage with these individuals," Brown told the committee.
"Being in the streets daily, most of the problems is resources, lack of resources," said Michael Murphy, who oversees the program's 16 outreach workers. They go into neighborhoods to help identify those who are most at risk of killing someone or becoming a victim themselves.
"Put poverty around a mentality of hopelessness and I only know one way to get money, here comes violence," Murphy explained.
The peacemakers not seen telling the committee about their work are the seven "interrupters" who go where violence is about to erupt and try to stop it.
The city's Office of Public Health Safety, the department that oversees the Peacemakers program, says they've stopped 654 conflicts from becoming another homicide or shooting statistic in the past year.
When the program started lasted January, their goal was to help bring those numbers down by more than the 10% achieved in the same period last year. IMPD says homicides are down by 14.5% from this time last year. Non-fatal shootings are down by 12.5%.
Lauren Rodriguez, deputy mayor for public health and safety, says she believes the peacemakers' work is part of that.
"It's not just us, but we're contributing," she said. explaining the program hopes to contribute more to that effort by increasing its number of peacemakers to 60 in the coming year.