'Don't talk about it, be about it': Black Indianapolis residents who need help lose hope

Terry Triplett has heard it all before. 

A new politician talks about helping the neighborhood. A new study will examine racial and socioeconomic disparities. A new initiative aims to address criminal justice and police reform. 

That's why this time around — even after a nationwide protest over racial equality, even after Mayor Joe Hogsett's initiative to "re-imagine public safety," even after the Indianapolis City-County Council declared racism a public health crisis — Triplett remains jaded to the fact that anything will change for his predominantly Black community.

"It's hard to believe anything that they say," Triplett, sporting a "Brightwood born and raised" T-shirt, said about city officials, "because they say one thing and do another."

Even before the pandemic, Indianapolis was at a standstill over how to properly address its rising number of homicides, which disproportionately affect Black men. 

But after the death of Black residents at the hands of police — including Dreasjon Reed and McHale Rose — racial justice has come to the forefront of political conversation.

The responses from the mayor, the Police Department and the City-County Council have come in droves: A new partnership with New York University to examine public safety. Body cameras for 1,100 police officers. A "Black Lives Matter" mural painted downtown. 

But they also come after years of other initiatives: Millions of dollars in crime prevention grants. A criminal justice reform task force. Two pilot programs for police body cameras.

Now, some residents wonder — doubt, even — whether things will actually change, while city officials say they cannot fix generations' worth of systemic racism overnight.

"That mayor, he's not a bad guy," said Triplett, sitting in his Brightwood apartment among his fish tanks. "He's not a bad guy. I just see them like all the rest of them — they just talk."

Residents urge less talk, more action

In 2016, Hogsett revealed a criminal justice reform strategy that would "profoundly change the way justice is dispensed" by using a holistic approach to divert people from jail and instead into mental health treatment or other services.  The city broke ground two years later on a new Community Justice Center. Expected to be completed in 2021, it will feature an assessment and intervention center for mental health.

In 2019, the council passed a plan to address food insecurity issues that included the development of a phone app to locate food pantries.

And just this year, a new council focused on race and equity has plans to distribute community grants to council districts based on need. 

But all the while, the number of investigations for criminal homicides have increased — from 144 in 2015, the year before Hogsett took office, to 154 last year.  

Four of those years were record-breaking, and this year the city may be on track to reach another record.

Frustration has bubbled over. And residents still point to a lack of quality education and food in certain parts of the city.

Now, some Black Indianapolis residents want fewer studies on crime and fewer proclamations on race.

They want more action.

The kind of action that Triplett, a neighborhood patriarch, takes for the community he grew up in. Outside of his apartment, boxes of food sit for those in need. 

If the city really wants to show that it cares, he noted, focus on the little things. Change the nearby tennis courts that no one uses into a basketball court. Supply the area with Black police officers who truly know the residents.

"Don't talk about it, be about it," he said. "If you gonna do something, talking to us ain't gonna help. Talking to us ain't gonna do nothing."

Indianapolis heightens efforts

In recent weeks, the city has done a mixture of both. 

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department announced an end to no-knock warrants, a revision of its use-of-force policy and progressive discipline matrix, and a board to review use-of-force incidents.

Hogsett announced a partnership with New York University to examine the causes of crime and redefine public safety. His office distributed a public survey on crime and announced a three-member panel to review police response to the protests. 

Council members have proposed adding residents to the department's General Orders Committee, which approves department policy. Other council members have begun to resurrect a commission to study issues affecting Black men.

Some efforts — like a switch to hyperlocal policing and examining the root causes of crime — align with what residents want to see. Others don't seem toearn praises from residents who say they have seen similar efforts before.

"We've not really addressed the crime issue," said the Rev. David Greene of the Concerned Clergy of Indianapolis. "There's nothing that you've seen that's been new, innovative. We've studied it — we have core problems that come from high unemployment, food deserts, education, the lack thereof."

The city is not doing enough to address those issues, he said.

He also called for greater scrutiny of the programs that receive crime prevention grants, which will now specifically focus on curbing violent crime.

The Central Indiana Community Foundation, which awards $3 million in crime prevention grants from the city's Office of Public Health and Safety, conducts quarterly and end-of-year reviews for each grantee. If organizations do not meet their metrics, the foundation can withhold funding for the second half of the year. 

The office also receives annual evaluations on its own $300,000 violence reduction grants. The 2018-19 evaluation found that a majority of the 230 program participants, who were on average a Black male between the ages of 12 and 24, were able to secure employment. The IUPUI analysis concluded that preliminary findings show the effort was associated with small reductions in violent crime in specific geographic areas. 

On the crime-saturated far east side, longtime resident Shamika Hayworth sees many needs. 

She drives past one of the many rundown apartment complexes in her neighborhood. She looks out the window at residents standing outside. 

"This is nowhere near, by far, a living status," she said. "This is coping. This is surviving."

Hayworth wants better education, more grocery stores and more affordable housing for the neighborhood she was raised in. She wants officials to get out of the office and get in the streets to truly understand the despair that leads to crime.

To her, the administration's appointment of yet another panel to review yet another IMPD action — this time the department's response earlier this year to protests downtown — is "a joke."

"The same people who are saying this is what they're going to do, this is the same thing they've been saying," she said. "Same people, same conversation, no result, but a different day."

The panel includes former U.S. Attorney Deborah Daniels, former Indiana Supreme Court Associate Justice Myra Selby and Martin University President Sean Huddleston.

Hayworth seemed surprised to hear about the removal of the Confederate statue at Garfield Park and the painting of Black Lives Matter on Indiana Avenue. 

"Well, power (to them), I guess," said Hayworth, a mom of three children who makes $16 an hour and scrimps to pay her $1,399 monthly rent. "It don't move me."

City leaders say change takes time

City officials say fundamental change will take time. 

Council member La Keisha Jackson, who represents the far east side, understands her constituents' frustration.

"We keep wanting to say let's do reports, let's do studies, let's hire IUPUI, let's go get people from out of the state," she said. "We know what the issues are. What are we going to do about them?"

But she noted that the city has come up with some of these initiatives just last year, efforts that have been slowed due to the pandemic. Change, she said, isn't going to come overnight. 

Jackson hopes to increase the city's food security budget from roughly half a million dollars to $1.25 million.

Council member Leroy Robinson, who chairs the council's public safety and criminal justice committee, said it is far too soon to tell whether any of the city's new initiatives are working. These historic and systemic issues, he noted, have been developed over a very long period of time.

"It's very unfortunate that anyone would be so naive to think that with over 400 years of racial inequities in America and 200 years of racial inequities in Indianapolis, that we could solve those problems in a few short years," he said in an email. "It will take generations to actually 'solve' these issues, but we are taking steps each day to reduce some of these inequities."

The mayor's office also points to other improvements. A study of the city's Mobile Crisis Assistance Team, which features both officers and paramedics responding to service calls, found that the team was more likely to transport a person to medical treatment than to an arrest, spokeswoman Taylor Schaffer said. 

The city has since received nearly $2 million in grant funding to expand and conduct further analysis of the unit, she said.

Other small wins: using federal grant funding to open Cleo's Bodega amid a northwest food desert and the "Food in Transit" program at the Carson Transit Center downtown. 

But in Triplett's apartment, those successes seem a world away. He worries that the food he hands out isn't enough to sustain families through the next food drop.

"We're getting the scraps, we're bottom feeders, we're like the algae," he said. He turns around to face the fish in his fish tank. 

"We're him," he said. "We get what's left over."

Call IndyStar reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey at 317-444-6175 or email her at apakharvey@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmeliaPakHarvey.