One of the most successful political tools employed by MAGA bigots is fear–fear of dark-skinned people, and especially fear of crime (which, of course, they attribute to those dark-skinned folks). When I venture into suburban areas, I frequently encounter people who express shock that I actually live in my city’s core. Aren’t I afraid? Can I walk the streets? Implicit in those inquiries are two assumptions–a frequently voiced belief that downtown areas are crime-ridden, and a more masked belief that “those people” who populate city centers are criminals.
Facts, apparently, are irrelevant. In a recent column, our Chief of Police noted that crime in downtown Indianapolis represents all of six percent of all crime in our city–a statistic that accounts for my complete lack of wariness when I walk (yes, walk) to the grocery, the dentist, the bank…
My city isn’t the only urban area that is safe.
It turns out that, despite the racist rhetoric of Trump and his enablers, American cities are not hell-holes. (At least they weren’t until ICE was loosed upon them.) As The Atlantic has recently reported, America is currently experiencing a remarkable improvement in public safety. Moreover, that improvement has occurred despite a police-staffing crisis. “In August, the FBI released its final data for 2024, which showed that America’s violent-crime rate fell to its lowest level since 1969, led by a nearly 15 percent decrease in homicide—the steepest annual drop ever recorded.”
Preliminary 2025 numbers look even better. The crime analyst Jeff Asher has concluded that the national murder rate through October 2025 fell by almost 20 percent—and all other major crimes declined as well. The post-pandemic crime wave has receded, and then some. According to Asher’s analysis, Detroit, San Francisco, Chicago, Newark, and a handful of other big cities recorded their lowest murder rates since the 1950s and ’60s. “
According to Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at Princeton who studies urban violence, America’s cities are as safe as they’ve ever been in the history of the country.
What is puzzling is that this low point in violent crime has accompanied a downturn in police employment–there were 6 percent fewer officers at the beginning of 2025 than at the beginning of 2020, according to a survey by the Police Executive Research Forum, thanks to retirements and departures.
There are many plausible explanations for the recent crime downturn: sharper policing strategy, more police overtime, low unemployment, the lure of digital life, the post-pandemic return to normalcy. Each of these surely played a role. But only one theory can match the decline in its scope and scale: that the massive, post-pandemic investment in local governments deployed during the Biden administration, particularly through the American Rescue Plan Act, delivered a huge boost to the infrastructure and services of American communities—including those that suffered most from violent crime. That spending may be responsible for our current pax urbana.
As a researcher at the University of Chicago put it, ARPA sent billions of dollars to local governments to use as they saw fit. It turned out that “Investing in education, police, librarians, community centers, social workers, local nonprofits. Local-government employment rolls increased almost perfectly inverse to the crime rate.”
The article described the turn-around in Baltimore, a city that had experienced high crime rates for years, and noted that the approach used in Baltimore was only one “of scores of alternative public-safety ideas that were funded through ARPA.”
Cook County, home of Chicago and the nation’s second-largest county, put roughly $36 million into efforts such as Healing Hurt People Chicago, a trauma-recovery program for crime victims. Mecklenburg County, home of Charlotte, North Carolina, used ARPA to fund a “youth peace summit” and advertise a gun-lock-distribution program. Some ARPA money also bolstered police and sheriff’s departments directly.
The article emphasizes that the monies local governments directed explicitly to crime reduction represented a small percentage of ARPA funds supporting other uses, like summer jobs for teens, blight reduction, and green spaces. The largest category of ARPA spending was in “government operations”—funding local services and putting people back to work.
It turns out that when local governments have sufficient funding to support more extensive local infrastructures, crime declines. As one mayor put it, “There are so many factors that influence those crime statistics—parademic-response time, jobs programs, conflict-resolution techniques at violence-interrupter organizations, investments in neighborhood conditions. A thousand fathers for that victory of crime reduction.”
The last of ARPA grants will be gone this year. (Many have already been cut by the Trump administration.) We’ll soon see what really works to reduce crime–unleashing the ICE Gestapo on urban people of color, or adequately funding local governments.
One thing is for certain, the murder rate in Minneapolis has gone up this year.
Yep, one quick conversation on AI confirms exactly what Sheila share this morning. It would be an interesting breakdown to see how ARP funds were spent among Republican and Democrats across the country. Our MAGA mayor gave way too much money to nonprofits like the YMCA – a member driven fitness facility which doesn’t pay any taxes. What happened to membership and capital drives?Investments such as these have no returns.
The most glaring investments are moving PDs to “hot spots” of crime within the city and youth’s access to digital communities keeps them connected and away from roaming their community looking for trouble. The other great investment is on behavioral health, but that ended with Trump’s OBBB. The IU facility closed down their addiction/behavioral health unit in anticipation of major cuts in healthcare. I am sure it’s like that across the country. Drug and alcohol abuse impacts crime at every level.
I can tell you on X that Trump and Noem stated as fact that Pretti was a terrorist for carrying a gun and Bovino said he was there to murder ICE agents, and that went over like a lead balloon for gun rights activists. I am sure that Donald got calls from the NRA chapters around the country. Noem was already on thin “ice” so to speak, but how she lied about Minnesota’s events may result in her termination. Trump can use her as a scapegoat. If she gets run over by the proverbial bus, good riddance!
I remember when Downtown Indianapolis was an actual city downtown area with businesses, department stores and small shops to meet all needs and public transportation from suburban areas for those who needed it. Office complexes, hotels, residential areas and the many bars where shootings occur too often with congested areas and heavy traffic isn’t my idea of downtown city streets. It has been a few years since I was required to go to the City County Building for a court appearance and I was appalled at the dirty streets and general appearance of the city I used to love, work in, shopped in and found entertainment in the many theaters and the wide variety of restaurant options. There are always a few “exceptions to the rule” providing small, safe areas but I hope I never again in my lifetime have to go to the downtown area for any reason; even the thought scares me.
Working for the City of Indianapolis with those who were responsible for near total destruction of downtown for Circle Centre Mall I learned the basic plan for the City and Mel Simon & Associates was to force the outlying malls to be forced out of business to bring shoppers downtown to the Mall. The Big Box stores forced out the outlying malls and Circle Centre Mall wasn’t fully supported by Mayor Goldsmith and his restructuring of the original Circle Centre Mall and the local Republican party changed more than our shopping options. Police must concentrate their attention to downtown and neighborhoods suffer from the lack of patrolling which provided at least a warning to criminals. The rare occasion police make an appearance with lights flashing and patrols cars on the street; no one is arrested so the police are called again to the same homes and leave whatever the reason was for the call to bring them back. The crime rate appears to be down due to the lack of arrests to provide the numbers of actual crimes.
I fear the white MAGAs who live around me in the home I am now trapped in due to the inability to afford a safe home environment. Since 2016 my small neighborhood has changed from a family setting with children playing and neighbors being neighborly to a ghost town with doors closed and blinds drawn as I take my daily walks, weather permitting. Conversations with family members tells me that their neighborhoods are the same; it isn’t the dark skinned people we fear, it is the White Trump MAGAs and the Fascists who now rule our streets. In only TEN YEARS the crime rate of our federal government has brought about fears we never before considered being possible.
In my novel, “The Medalist”, I described an initiative much like the Marshall Plan for Europe, but for our blighted cities. The characters enacted the details of the plan that included vocational education for unemployed people of all ages INSIDE those neighborhoods that needed re-building. Retired or volunteer tradesmen did the teaching and directing while supplies and materials were provided by the initiative. The new “tradesmen” now had actual folding money to buy things with, so the boost to the local economy began right away.
But I do dream …
I read those very same stories about how crime rates were down so far. The conclusion and most of them was that there was no one factor that could be identified for the decrease. I think Sheila maybe has identified one factor that could’ve made a difference but again I don’t think it was the only one. When experts finally figure out what’s going on. It’ll be a good day because that means we can make it happen again.
Personally, I’m skeptical of the statistics because of the cutbacks at the federal level. There’s a good chance that the person that was supplying some chunk of the details got fired, and those numbers didn’t get included.
Gov. Waltz said that the Fed’s characterization of Pretti was “nonsense,” but I’d prefer him to have used the proper word, “Propaganda.” Every time I read about what they say, or see it on the news, that is what it is. plain and simple.
Vernon Turner, thank you for acting on your dream. Every little bit helps.
One thing I have noted is that every time there’s a reduction in crime, it is accompanied by a reduction in economic stress and in the rate of unemployment. When I was getting my MBA my economics professor and I discussed the subject of “full employment”. He put it at five percent. I had to argue for a three percent rate to defend my paper. We’ve been at or about three percent since shortly after the pandemic.
Some might be thinking, “What about the decrease in violent crimes during the pandemic?”. The response is that it’s really hard to commit violent crimes when everyone is staying at home.
Low unemployment that is accompanied by good social services should be a goal of every administration. Imagine how safe we would be if only we had universal healthcare and free childcare. Could we cope with a world in which nobody had to work three jobs, just to pay for those two essentials? How many people might return to the job market, if even more jobs were available and they didn’t have to worry about necessities?
Peggy. It’s good to know there’s another dreamer about. Maybe some day …
I live in the city, in a very densely populated area. I have gone downtown in the last year or two several times. I was not scared. My only complaint has more to do with parking and having to find alternative routes because of all the street closures and orange barrels everywhere.
I have ridden the Red Line, driven myself, visited the City-County Building to conduct business, attended events, participated in protests, never frightened or accosted in any way by anyone, including homeless individuals.
My own neighborhood is walkable and very safe. North District officers patrol the area at least once a day, passing quietly through, acknowledging a wave when given one. My neighbors are a diverse group, by race, ethnicity, age and genders. My political flags and signs have never been disturbed. There are MAGA here as well. I feel sorry for them, living in fear all the time. They become more and more isolated as things change around them.
In the despair and anguish that I feel as the federal and this state’s MAGA cult pushes more authoritarian rules through the Congress and the General Assembly has changed to deep anger and commitment to do everything I am able, little though that is, to push back.
Braun, Morales, Rokita and all of the other Quislings in the GA will be held accountable. May their names live in infamy.
RESIST.
Regarding this, Sheila: “It turns out that when local governments have sufficient funding to support more extensive local infrastructures, crime declines. As one mayor put it, “There are so many factors that influence those crime statistics—parademic-response time, jobs programs, conflict-resolution techniques at violence-interrupter organizations, investments in neighborhood conditions. A thousand fathers for that victory of crime reduction.”
The last of ARPA grants will be gone this year. (Many have already been cut by the Trump administration.) “
Just as the constant coverage of the ICE protests, and responses to them, provide critical information to those who might otherwise remain clueless, and the action that is demanded spurs change, attention needs to be paid to this critically important reporting. Crime is so misunderstood, so used as a means to mischaracterize communities…..fighting against that misinformation—and its consequences—needs constant attention in as many spheres as can be secured. The National Conference of Mayors ought to bring attention to crime reduction and the reasons for its success so that the purveyors of lies about it, and urban life in general, will be put before the people and, then, perhaps, funding will be secure. We have to keep attention focused on how the problems can be solved…..
Gaining attention matters—a lot. You do a great job on that front. And your columns appear on my Facebook page and cited in my columns as well…. The more folks do that, attention may be paid.
I’ll add this perspective as someone who’s served this city for 26 years.
Crime statistics are often misunderstood and routinely weaponized. Most of the numbers people argue over are reported incidents, not arrests, and certainly not outcomes. A crime counts the moment a report is written — solved or not. Arrest numbers are a different dataset entirely and are driven by staffing, deployment, and policy priorities.
The real measure of public safety — and the one that rarely gets talked about — is clearance rates. Clearance means cases were actually solved. Victims got answers. Accountability happened and this is where IMPD is winning especially under current leadership.
That’s where the work shows up, especially in a staffing crisis.
So yes, crime has declined nationally, and yes, community investment matters. Anyone who’s done this job long enough understands that crime reduction is never about a single factor. It’s layered — economics, education, neighborhood stability, services, prevention and enforcement.
But fear-based narratives about cities — particularly those rooted in race — ignore both the data and the lived reality of people who actually work and live in urban cores every day.
Downtowns aren’t war zones. Cities aren’t hellholes. And public safety isn’t measured by who yells the loudest — it’s measured by whether harm is addressed and cases are solved.
That’s the part worth paying attention to.
JoAnn Green, did you really read this? Shelia wrote that Indianapolis Downtown only accounted for 6% of crime in the city of Indianapolis.
Please, stay in your shuttered dark house with your head in the sand!
People moved/migrated to areas outside of the downtown because there were more people than Downtown Indy could handle, business moved that way to capture sales. DUH!