Monday, November 2, 2009

Keeping Our Fingers Crossed on Murders

Following on the heels of the Forbes 'safest cities' faux pas, the Star lends a hand to Mayor Ballard by running a piece in today's edition on how we just might squeak through 2009 with fewer than 100 murders. That sure would be nice.

For those who like to follow these things, BartLies.com devotes at least 95% of its efforts to real time tracking of murders in our community.

Community policing gets the nod as to what is having an impact. Of course, trends up in violent crime are usually credited to increased percentages of teenage youth in a community or something equally outside of public safety control, while dropping rates are credited to some police action. That aside, Scott Newman's analytical approach to proving that something works, then repeating those proven activities, was a real advantage in our City. Hopefully that emphasis is not gone with his departure.

Let's keep our fingers crossed that there indeed are fewer than 100 homicides in Indianapolis in 2009. Then lets keep our fingers crossed that IMPD can pinpoint how to keep that number dropping.

5 comments:

Gary R. Welsh said...

I noticed that Bart's Lies has the number of murders to date at 84, compared to the 81 claimed in the Star article.

Had Enough Indy? said...

I visited Bartlies a couple of days ago and he had bullet hole background, meaning there had been a murder that day. Maybe the Star article was written before then and was waiting for space to open up???? Monday can be filler day.

Downtown Indy said...

Indystar's homicide map is not working for some reason. I've been trying to look at it since Saturday but it doesn't load:

Indystar Homicide map

Is it just me? Does it work for you?

Had Enough Indy? said...

DI - not working for me, either.

Downtown Indy said...

Good. They blocked me from some things after I spoke out against the Wishard deal - wasn't sure how extensively they've put the clamps on me.

I am eagerly awaiting the next day or two to see if my posting privs magically return. I wish I knew someone on the inside as it would be interesting to know if there was a memo or angry phonecall from Ryerson to shut me down and how many others to whom they might have done the same thing. I dared to use the 'lie' word last week, which we all know sends Ryerson ballistic.