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Downtown businesses already seeing impact of new public safety measures

At least $750,000 has been earmarked for an increased downtown police presence.

INDIANAPOLIS — The next time you visit downtown Indianapolis, you'll likely notice a few changes afoot when it comes to public safety.  

The changes include an increase in foot and bike patrols by off-duty police officers and new Safety Ambassadors. 

It's part of a new $750,000 initiative announced by Downtown Indy and Mayor Joe Hogsett in mid-August to help with downtown recovery. Other efforts have included clean-ups and beautification as well as addressing issues related to the city's homeless population and the drug dealers who prey on them.

"There's a huge difference now since say end of July," said Doug Stephenson.

Stephenson owns Downtown Comics, just off Monument Circle on East Market Street. Like so many neighboring businesses, his has been hit hard by the pandemic and the riots. Early on, Stephenson hammered the mayor and other city leaders for not doing more to help downtown businesses recover. And now?

"They've housed a lot of the homeless, kicked off the ambassadors program and we see a uniformed police presence all the time down here. The Circle feels safe again," he said. 

The bike patrols have been ramping up over the past few weeks.  

"We've been able to quadruple the number of hours that the patrols do," said Downtown Indy's Bob Schultz. "And they're going to areas where businesses are saying they're seeing concerns."

The new Safety Ambassadors finished training this week and begin patrolling the Mile Square Monday. They include police cadets and civilians. Their job is to help visitors with questions, stay in touch with business owners and alert police to any issues or trouble that arise.

Dane Nutty, director of the Public Safety Foundation, stressed the ambassadors are not police officers.

"They're extenders, so they don't have enforcement capacity. They're not to intervene in any issues, but they're extra sets of eyes and ears," said Nutty.

"We have radios to contact police and they'll send help," said newly-trained ambassador Glenn Bryant. "We think we'll make a difference, people coming down and seeing us around, talking to folks."

"We have to remove every obstacle that contributes to the perception that downtown is not safe because COVID is (the) real enemy here," Schultz said. 

13News requested data about police runs from the Downtown District for 2019 and the first part of this year. The list included 23 categories with police runs from March 1 through Aug. 15. The total number of runs in 2019 was 4,710 compared to 4,302 in 2020, roughly a 9 percent drop. The runs that increased in 2020 included vandalism (176 runs in 2019, 265 in 2020), fights with a weapon (one run in 2019, nine in 2020) and persons stabbed (five runs in 2019, 15 in 2020.)

"They're doing all they can," said Giorgio's Pizza co-owner George Stergiopoulos of police and other efforts. "Of course, the homeless situation has to be addressed, but I think they're doing all they can to clean up and keep downtown safe and secure."

IMPD is also partnering with businesses to create a network of 150 street-level cameras. So far, 31 have signed on with the potential of 70 new cameras among them, according to Nutty. 

"Since the end of July through August and most of September, I've seen an unbelievable improvement," said Stergiopoulos.

He said one of the biggest challenges is simply "having workers downtown. We're not there yet."

Schultz said roughly 30,000 workers, or just 20 percent of the downtown workforce, is back. Those workers are crucial to downtown restaurants and retailers. Their return is subject to decisions by their individual employers.

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