IMPD seizes 1,213 guns in 12 months as part of shift in targeting violence
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has released new data from the last 12 months of its enhanced community safety initiative.
According to IMPD data, more than 1,200 guns have been seized over the last year.
Capt. Brady Ball of IMPD said, “We don’t really hang our hat on those numbers. As Chief (Randal) Taylor has mentioned, and as (Assistant) Chief (Christopher) Bailey has really preached to the teams, it’s more about quality than it is quantity.”
Ball is the coordinator for the enhanced community safety initiative. His task is to create violence reduction teams and task forces to target problem areas.
“The idea of really being laser-focused on a person as a crime contributor and a specific hotspot location as a crime contributor. We did not really know what our results would be, but a little bit surprisingly from the research Chief Bailey did and Chief Taylor did, and the working group behind this initiative, we saw an impact, and you can see it in the numbers,” Ball said.
The police captain believes the initiative is working.
From April 5, 2021, to April 5, 2022, IMPD seized 1,213 guns. He attributes those numbers to a shift in the way the department is targeting violent crime.
“We knew that if we focused on the people, the hotspot, the places, the crime areas that needed attention, the guns would come, and that’s what’s happened here,” Ball said.
The captain believes much remains to be learned in what their doing, but, with this data, he says, IMPD knows what direction it wants to go as it continues working to reduce violent crime in Indianapolis.
“What we want to know is what house, what people in that block are the cause of the most of this violent crime. To be honest, we’re still working on that, but, without this initiative and working in the direction we’ve been working, we would not have known that’s the direction we needed to go.”
