INDIANAPOLIS — When Detective Andrew Girt gets behind the wheel of his unmarked police car on Indy's north side, he's helping steer the city toward safer streets. And to do that lately, he's taking a different route.
"We've seen this make a difference," he said, as he drove through one of the neighborhoods he works.
Girt used to be a narcotics detective. Now his focus is guns.
He's a member of IMPD's Violent Crime Task Force. Along with the department's Violence Reduction Team, they formed in April, 2021 when the city's homicide rate was breaking records and other violent crime was also on the rise.
"We needed to start focusing on the gun violence,” said Captain Brady Ball, who oversees both task forces. "What we found was, if we focus more on violence, which also stems from narcotics...that we would be in a better place."
So police administrators shifted more than 90 officers to the Violence Reduction Team or the Violent Crime Task Force. Their singular focus is working shots fired calls and getting illegal firearms off the street.
"These investigators will take a shots fired call, case the area, look for video, talk to witnesses," Ball said.
He said detectives examine shell casings and connect them to the gun and the person who pulled the trigger.
"Shots fired used to be handled by a different detective that had other responsibilities like working thefts or vandalism," Girt said. "Now we can focus solely on these shots fired investigations. That way, we can try to put a dent in it or at least identify the major crime contributors in the city and be able to hopefully be able to prevent them from doing any other harm to people."
Ten months later, police say it's working.
"At the beginning, we had several shots fired incidents a day. Now, about a year later, we have had days where we haven't had a shots fired incident, which shows you that maybe we are putting a dent in what's happening," Girt said.
Last month, officers confiscated 120 illegal firearms.
"This is a group of officers that come in every day and they work their butts off," Ball said. "As police officers, we live in Marion County, so we're impacted by this. We want this to be a safe city."