INDIANAPOLIS — On Thursday afternoon at IMPD East District headquarters, the community room was filled with police and officials from multiple city agencies talking about the dozen shootings in Indianapolis in the last week.
"We dive deep into each shooting to understand it better because, oftentimes, what we find is these shootings are retaliatory,” IMPD Deputy Chief Kendale Adams said. “They are connected to something else, and so if we can determine what that something else is and we can get in front of it, whether it be either through enforcement or services, we're likely to prevent the next shooting."
Each week, 40-60 people from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, the Office of Public Health and Safety, the Marion County Prosecutor's Office, community corrections and probation meet to share information, looking for ways to prevent further violence.
"If this person died, we know that they're attached to this community in some way,” said Lauren Rodriguez, deputy mayor of Public Health & Safety. “Let's go see if they need additional services and help to mourn the loss of their loved one, but then also to help them from driving down that area of retaliatory nature."
Indy Peacemakers targets outreach to specific neighborhoods, families, even individuals.
"Some of them haven't done anything illegal but are making threats to retaliate for their friends' shooting online, and they have the risk factors that say they might actually retaliate, so they will be referred to the Office of Public Health and Safety and the Indianapolis Public Safety Foundation for the Indy Peace Fellowship,” said David Muhammad, from the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR).
NICJR partnered with the city of Indianapolis to design a gun violence reduction strategy that began implementation in January 2022. That includes the creation of the Indy Peace Fellowship's Indy Peace Website, an up to 18-month program to help people most at risk to be perpetrators or victims of gun violence make better choices and find new opportunities.
The weekly shooting review meeting has been going on since 2020.
“Can we predict something that's going to happen next? If so, then how can we intervene at that moment? And not just on the policing side of it, but on the social services side of it as well,” Rodriguez said.
City officials believe the Indy Violence Reduction Partnership has contributed significantly to the 31% drop in criminal homicides over the past two years in Indianapolis.
"In order for us to continue seeing decreases in numbers, we have to prevent the next shooting,” Adams said. “We're not going to prevent every shooting, and I think we recognize that. But we want to prevent the next shooting.”