(INDIANAPOLIS) – Indy’s police union and some City-County Councillors announced plans for a community discussion of violent crime. They may have gotten more discussion than they bargained for.
A week after council Democrats blocked a Fraternal Order of Police-backed proposal for a special commission on violent crime, Minority Leader Brian Mowery and council Democrats Jared Evans and Dan Boots announced plans for their own series of community meetings on the subject, to compare notes on successful community anti-crime strategies. The first meeting will be next Monday at a still-undetermined location. But while about a dozen spectators at a City Market announcement were fed up with crime, they weren’t any happier with the meeting organizers.
Angry protesters shouted for several minutes at organizers, accusing them of not doing enough to seek input from the African-American community in the neighborhoods hit hardest by violence. They vented frustration at a response they suggest is more talk than action. And while Fraternal Order of Police president Rick Snyder argued police and the community need to “stop the bleed” with immediate action to keep violent offenders off the streets, spectators berated Snyder and other speakers for being too quick to brush aside long-term root causes of crime like poverty and homelessness.
Snyder says the spectators’ fury illustrates the pain that crime is inflicting on the community, and the reason the meeting is needed.
(Photo: Eric Berman/WIBC)
