Intersections

To calm a rising homicide rate, Indianapolis public safety has been trying a big social experiment: reaching deeper into the city’s most distressed neighborhoods with services like mental health care, food giveaways and school mentoring. Will that strategy reach everyone in those neighborhoods or will some still fall through the cracks?

Two stories about mental health, from two different sides. Emergency services -- police, fire, paramedics -- have significantly more interactions with people suffering a mental illness in Indianapolis’ most distressed neighborhoods than the city average. Stigma and economic circumstances play a role in lack of care and often those mental illnesses turn into substance abuse issues.

Data-driven law enforcement replaced neighborhood policing a long time ago. Some in Indianapolis, like the mayor and chief of police, want to go back. They want officers to know their beats, and for the communities to know the officers. But in some neighborhoods, community policing is already making a comeback. We spent time with one officer already doing that as he drove the streets of a struggling Indy neighborhood.

In Indianapolis, the number of perpetrators and victims of homicide under the age of 18 has doubled in the past three years. Community leaders point to a disregard for life among youth, driven by a lack of caring adults in their lives. There’s a struggle between mentors and gang members for who will raise those children.

About 9,000 people will leave a state prison this year and return to life in Indianapolis. But more than half of them will commit another crime and return to prison. They’ll fail to find work and revert to stealing, or take up the same drugs that took them down the dark road to begin with. Sometimes, that cycle ends with homicide. So stopping that cycle of reoffending is critical. But it’s not easy.

Intersections hits the ground, following along on several efforts to bring city and non-profit services directly to residents of the focus areas through door-to-door efforts. And we introduce our listening tour, hearing what focus area resident's true realities are.

It’s been a year since the police department and public safety officials in Indianapolis began their analytical and holistic approach to reducing violent crime in the city. For this episode we take a brief pause and look back with two conversations.

He’s a frequent face on the evening news, a prominent voice for peace in Indianapolis. Before Rev. Charles Harrison became an activist, he faced a major decision as a teenager whose own life was touched by violence. He chose God over revenge and became an anti-violence crusader.

In some of Indianapolis’ most distressed neighborhoods there’s no grocery store. That put even more attention on a big part of public safety officials’ plan to reduce violence in certain neighborhoods. Pop-up food pantries that ran this summer were the most visible - and popular - part of the effort so far. In the next chapter of Intersections, we explore the role that food plays in fighting crime -- and why food pantries aren't the only answer to hunger.

Indianapolis is undertaking a big experiment, to see whether attacking the root causes of crime in just six neighborhoods can reduce the city’s murder rate. In the first part of Intersections, we look at whether it will work, and meet the architect and people living it.