Indiana

New Jacked Up City

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

Another day, another murder.  This one was last night at 40th and Keystone.  A 24-year old man was found dead from gunshot wounds.  To date there have been about 60 homicides in Indianapolis, and while overall crime is down, particularly aggravated assault, it doesn’t help when the public picks up a newspaper or turns on the radio or television and hears about another murder.

It also doesn’t help when citizens read about their elected officials getting arrested on either public corruption or public intoxication charges.   And it’s insult added to injury when members of the police department disgrace their badges and violate the public trust.

And when you throw property taxes into the mix, and the fact that efforts to pay them on an installment plan failed because some of your elected officials think the government needs your money more than you do, this all seems that Indianapolis has become a pretty jacked up place.

Not yet.

There is good news in all this.  A majority of the homicides involve someone with a felony conviction, so it’s not like we’re losing productive members of society here.  Unfortunately when the bad guys engage in gun play it’s the citizenry who tend to get hurt.  Luckily, staying off the corner at 38th Post Road at 2 a.m. on a weekend is one sure way to not become a victim.

Also we’re lucky that when it comes to public corruption, people are being held  accountable, not as many as I would like to see, but it’s a start.  And even the people who hate law enforcement have to admit that it was other IMPD officers who turned in the ones who went astray.  That tells me the atmosphere has changed and officers are now more willing to turn in bad actors than they were under previous administrations.

Is all perfect in Indianapolis, not by a long shot, but it’s also not Detroit.  But I do think the right people are finally in place to turn this situation around.  Changing a city is like turning an aircraft carrier, it takes a while but it gets done.  And if you still think things are bad, imagine how worse they would be if other people were still in charge?

That would be totally jacked up!

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on July 06, 2008 (boomark / email).