Police blame juvenile behavior for recent Broad Ripple violence
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Broad Ripple's streak of violence can be chalked up to juvenile behavior enabled by late-night establishments, police say.
Why it matters: Broad Ripple is arguably the city's most popular neighborhood, so it attracts outsized attention when shootings happen — and there have been at least three in May.
Zoom in: Bars and parking lots attract people for late-night gatherings in the heart of Broad Ripple, where arguments sometimes spin out of control and turn into gunfire, Chris Bailey, assistant chief of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, said.
- Bailey said trouble tends to start in one strip mall parking lot — which he didn't specify because he didn't want to blame individual businesses — but he said police can't do anything to head it off.
- "It is not illegal to openly walk with a handgun. It is not illegal to loiter and there is no curfew to enforce. Those things are not within the control of the police department," Bailey said.
What they're saying: "People that live in Broad Ripple get more police protection per capita than people that experience violent crime every single day," Bailey said. "We're expending a lot of money and resources to babysit adults, who just, at the end of the day, don't know how to act."
The other side: Jordan Dillon, executive director of the Broad Ripple Village Association, has acknowledged some of those difficulties but told the IBJ she thinks more can be done.
- "We're at a point where there has to be some type of infrastructure or policy change to help make sure that Broad Ripple, as one of Indianapolis' original cultural districts, remains as great of a community as it always has been," Dillon told the IBJ.
What's next: As part of Mayor Joe Hogsett's new public safety plan, announced last week, the mayor's office plans to test the limits of the state's nuisance law by bringing litigation against businesses that fail to rein in patrons.
- The state broadly defines a nuisance as any threat to public safety, leaving the precise application unclear for cities.
Go deeper: An IndyStar investigation tied more than 600 reports of violence to Indianapolis bars, nightclubs and event centers since 2016.
- IndyStar found that "unlike neighboring states, Indiana law prohibits cities from using nuisance ordinances to regulate alcohol establishments."