Public safety proposals head to City-County Council

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Two public safety proposals are now headed to the City-County Council for a full vote. The Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee met on Wednesday evening and recommended that the council passes both of the proposals. One is for crime prevention funding and the other is for changes to the Citizens Police Complaint Board.

The Community Recovery Plan proposes to give more crime prevention funding to districts with higher violence. The proposal is backed by data from the SAVI program of The Polis Center at IUPUI. It shows the darker colored districts on the map of Indianapolis, highlighting downtown, the east side and the northeast side as areas that would receive the highest amounts of funding from the $1.25 million budgeted for public safety.

“This is really the first step to the larger and much bigger initiative to the city of Indianapolis on how to allocate resources,” said committee chairperson (D – District 1) Leroy Robinson. “Because, again, we know where the needs are. But what the SAVI team has done is showed us that this is how government should operate. Government should operate using data and provide resources where the needs are. So, when we look at our friends at IMPD, they know where the crime is, they know where the need is and they allocate resources to those areas. So the same thing should be done with financial resources.”

The second proposal heading to the full City-County Council makes changes to the Citizens’ Police Complaint process. Among the changes are an extended timeline to file a complaint, going from 60 days to six months. The proposal also allows the person filing five minutes to speak instead of no time at all. Plus, the proposal creates a transparency portal, making all the complaints public.

The Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee is recommending that the council passes both of these proposals when they meet next month.