Turf War
AFTER FOUR STRAIGHT record-setting years of homicides in Indianapolis, Reverend Charles Harrison was hardly in a mood to celebrate. As the president of the city’s Ten Point Coalition, a faith-based group that aims to combat gun violence among young black men, walked through a gravel parking lot toward Fervent Prayer Church off 38th Street last June, he knew he would be congratulated. He would soon open a press conference marking a year without a homicide in TPC’s patrol zone on the far-east side—an area that had recorded three murders the year before. Yet Harrison couldn’t muster a smile. Indianapolis was on track to break its homicide record for the fifth straight year. We have so much work left to do, he thought.
Even so, he allowed himself a moment at the press conference to appreciate what TPC had helped achieve in its first year there. “I have learned after doing this for 20 years that no one group, no one agency, can curb the pattern of violence alone,” Harrison told the audience, which included Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, police chief Bryan Roach, and a representative from the Indiana Attorney General’s office. “It takes a village. I believe that good things happen when community, the city, law enforcement, grassroots organizations, and faith-based [groups] come together.”
The celebration didn’t last long. While every speaker had been careful to note that the no-homicide streak was limited to TPC’s patrol area—about 5 percent of the far-east side—a poster on
