INDIANAPOLIS — Last April, Indianapolis Metro Police created an initiative to seek out and remove illegal guns from city streets.
Little did officers know that the push would lead them to figure out a trend in the high crime areas of Indianapolis and give them an idea of how to start reducing crime in those places.
Between April 2021 and April of this year, IMPD has removed 1,213 guns from the possession of people who are not allowed to have them.
“These are all guns that have been or could have been used in other homicides,” said Capt. Brady Ball to WISH-TV. “We don’t necessarily hang our hat on those numbers. As Chief (Randal) Taylor has mentioned, and as (Assistant) Chief (Chris) Bailey has really preached to the teams, it’s more about quality than it is quantity.”
Essentially, Ball said that they have been following a path laid out by where they are finding these illegal guns, and it’s leading them to the places that are the catalysts for violent crimes in problem areas of the city.
“We did not really know what our results would be,” Capt. Ball added. “But a little bit surprisingly from the research, … and the working group behind this initiative, we saw an impact, and you can see it in the numbers.”
Ball said that as they continued to focus on the people associated with where the guns were found that even more guns would come, and that’s what he says happened. Still, he added the initiative is still in a learning curve on where they go from here, but he is confident that the work they are doing is yielding massive results in reducing crime numbers in Indianapolis.
This year homicide numbers and other violent crime numbers are trending down. Last year the Circle City saw a record-breaking year for homicides.
