Fewer Indianapolis kids were killed by gun violence in 2024

Driving the news: That number dropped to 17 last year according to Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department data analyzed by Axios Indianapolis and Chalkbeat Indiana.

• That's more than a 60% year-over-year decline and the fewest number of children lost to gun violence in at least six years.

Yes, but: Gun violence among young people remains a big issue. While homicides were down, IMPD recorded a 7% increase in the number of non-fatal shootings among kids.

• IMPD chief Chris Bailey told the IndyStar that the department attributes part of the increase in non-fatal shootings among children to accidental shootings after kids get ahold of unsecured firearms.

The big picture: The number of non-fatal shootings among young people in Indianapolis has been on the rise since 2016, according to assistant professor Lauren Magee with the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at IU Indianapolis.

• Her research found that homicide rates among minors tripled from 2016 to 2023 and for every homicide, there are three to four non-fatal shootings.

State of play: Advocates and city agencies have been working for years to address gun violence among young people, but a dramatic increase during the pandemic brought a new urgency to leaders looking for solutions.

• The city of Indianapolis created a position within the Office of Public Health and Safety to focus on preventing youth violence.
• After seven kids were wounded in a shooting downtown last spring, the city began enforcing its curfew for minors.

The latest: Ralph Durrett Jr., the city's chief violence prevention officer, has been on the job for about eight months.

• Much of that time, he said, has been spent connecting with those already working on this issue and connecting them to each other — knitting a safety net that stretches across the city, rather than leaving them in individual silos.
• Some of the city's best assets, he said, are mentoring programs that work with at-risk youth to teach them skills like conflict resolution and emotional intelligence and workforce training programs that address causes of violence — issues like poverty, food insecurity, lack of opportunity and under-education.

What he's saying: "We can pour into children all day long, but if we're not focusing in on the environments and the culture that they come from, then we're missing a primary piece," Durrett told Axios. "So as much as we're focusing on kids, we have to be able to focus on the communities that they come from, the environments that they're in."

The bottom line: Kareem Hines, founder of the New BOY program that mentors at-risk boys, said the youth violence situation is still dire.

• "They're all still intending to kill each other. They just don't know how to shoot," he said.
• "These kids, they're not shooting to hurt each other, I know that they're shooting to kill," he said. "It's just fortunate that those non-fatal shootings weren't fatal."

This article was co-published with Chalkbeat Indiana's Amelia Pak-Harvey as part of a reporting partnership about youth gun violence in Indianapolis. Read the Chalkbeat story here.