INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis leaders are fighting to improve gun violence problems plaguing the Broad Ripple area.
Community leaders and police spent time in the community Wednesday afternoon, speaking to business owners and residents who were voicing their concerns over safety issues in the popular neighborhood.
Throughout the day, Broad Ripple shops and restaurants stayed busy with residents and visitors coming through, avoiding heavy construction to hit up their favorite spots.
But nighttime spikes in violent crime, shootings and issues in the neighborhood have made things frustrating for business owners like Jeanne Kaplan.
“During the day, we don’t really have any major safety challenges," said Kaplan, owner of Artifacts in Broad Ripple. "But we see evidence of all kinds of stuff that happens at night. So when we come back in the morning, there’s a variety of different things that we can see, like, 'OK, crazy things have happened.'”
Kaplan said they regularly open up the shop in the morning to find trash covering sidewalks and puddles of vomit. One way she and city leaders are working to turn this trend around is by adding technology to better police the area, like the new B-Link cameras outside her shop.
"I just was trying to be a good neighbor and want to do my part to make the area a little bit better and yeah, to help out," Kaplan said.
IMPD says they've recently added license plate reader technology and trailer cameras in the area, too.
"Those have been invaluable on the weekends, when the population for Broad Ripple really changes. And it changes, it gets bigger. It allows our folks at the incident analysis center to look at what's going on in real time and really deploy our resources appropriately to prevent anything from happening in advance rather than responding to it," said IMPD Assistant Police Chief Christopher Bailey.
Visiting Broad Ripple Wednesday afternoon as part of a public safety walk, IMPD and city leaders came by to speak with business owners like Kaplan, making sure they're helping make needed changes to improve safety.
“We work very closely with neighborhoods for a couple of different reasons, not the least of which is that if there are challenges, nobody knows the neighborhood better than the neighbors themselves,” said Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett.
Getting the chance to improve Broad Ripple and make steps toward positive change is a welcome sight for many business owners.
"I hope that we get through this sort of rough chapter and that more businesses open in Broad Ripple," said Kaplan.
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