Project Safe Neighborhood-Southern District

As part of BJA’s Smart Suite, the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), represents a strategic approach that brings more “science” into criminal justice operations by leveraging innovative applications of analysis, technology, and evidence-based practices with the goal of improving performance and effectiveness while containing costs. The program's effectiveness is based on the cooperation of local, state, and federal agencies engaged in a unified approach led by the U.S. Attorney (USA) in each district. The USA is responsible for establishing a collaborative PSN task force of federal, state, and local law enforcement and other community members to implement gang violence and gun crime enforcement, intervention and prevention initiatives within the district. Through the PSN task force, the USA will implement the five design features of PSN—partnerships, strategic planning, training, outreach, and accountability—to address specific gun crime and gang violence problems in that district.

For FY 2016 the IMPD plans to apply a comprehensive data driven approach to enforce, prevent, and deter violent crimes by building upon existing partnerships with the Southern District Project Safe Neighborhoods Steering Committee, Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, Indianapolis Marion County Forensic Agency and Federal partners at the USAO and ATF, and existing community neighborhoods within the concentrated beats. The objectives for this project are as follows:
• Increase enforcement efforts to remove individuals illegally possessing firearms using targeted investigations, probations sweeps, and warrant sweeps in the beat areas while utilizing the RISSafe tool
• Continue the quality of constructive possession cases by utilizing the highly effective evidence collection of firearms on scene by purchasing more of the firearm liaison kits and training more officers to use them
• Continue to improve community awareness and engagement in the solutions by invitation to Community Conversations, attendance by community partners in monthly Data Center discussions and increased visibility of the Crime Stoppers, Inc. tip line for anonymous information on gun and gang related crimes
• Decrease recidivism by engaging the community partners and service providers in the beat areas to tackle the root causes of the inclination to illegal behavior such as lack of education, homelessness, mental health issues, etc. CA/NCF