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Neighbor is open to police beat system

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Tom Kincaid has called 21st and Arlington home for 40 plus years. During that stretch he’s seen a lot of neighbors come and go.

“Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s bad,” said Kincaid.

Recently Kincaid has seen the bad. There have been three murders in his neighborhood in the last two weeks. On Monday, the Marion County Corner identified 19-year-old Terry Williams as the first murder victim of 2016.

Around 11 p.m., IMPD reported to a call of a person shot on the 6000 block of Windsor Drive. When officers arrived on the scene they found Williams dead from a gunshot wound.

On Christmas Eve, two teenage boys, 15-year-old Timmee Jackson, and 16-year-old Dione Williams disappeared from the same neighborhood. Homicide detectives would later find a murder scene on the 5900 block of East 23rd street. Despite not recovering the bodies, IMPD would later arrest 49-year-old Kevin Watkins, a bail bondsman for the murder of the two boys.

All of these crimes happened in Mr. Kincaid’s neighborhood.

“Everybody expects the east side to change, it’s not going to change,” said a man walking down the street.

Recently Mayor Joe Hogsett released a plan to target crime in some of the city’s most challenged neighborhoods. Those plans include a crime center and creating a new homicide response team, and lastly beat policing.

The beat policing patrols means officers would attend neighborhood meetings, walk the community they live in, and finally get to know their neighbors and the community they serve.

” I guess it would be okay, you have certain hours, right around this time that you hardly ever see an officer here after dark,”

In addition to the police beat patrols, Kincaid would like to see officers parking their squad cars in the neighborhoods. He believes the mere image of an a empty squad car could deter criminal activity.

IMPD is still taking tips in the Terry Williams murder investigation. You are urged to call Crime Stoppers at 262-TIPS, or 262-8477.

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