INDIANAPOLIS — Melody Howard used to come to Broad Ripple Village all the time, but lately, she finds ways to avoid it.
“I am from here, I live five minutes from here, went to Butler, used to come here, spend time with my friends,” she said. “The violence here, I don’t even come to Broad Ripple anymore.”
The reaction comes after a weekend stabbing reported in the area on Sunday. Police were called to the Kassebaum Building, along Guilford Avenue, just after 2 a.m. Police said a fight led to the stabbing, leaving one person in the hospital in critical condition.
IMPD says no arrests have been made, but preliminary information has led investigators to believe all parties involved have been identified. Police are still investigating.
The stabbing is the latest in concerns of ongoing violence in the Broad Ripple area. Over the summer, police responded to back-to-back weekends of shootings in July, which led to at least six people hurt. Those incidents happened along Broad Ripple and Guilford Avenue.
“We have a lot of great restaurants and establishments that are now closing a little bit earlier in the evenings because of the concern with crime later in the evening,” said Jordan Dillon, executive director of the Broad Ripple Village Association (BRVA).
Sunday’s stabbing also came just days after BRVA and IMPD hosted a public safety walk through the area with Mayor Joe Hogsett. During the walk, Hogsett, police and BRVA met with local businesses in the area to address ongoing construction and overall safety concerns.
Dillon said BRVA has continued its partnership with IMPD in implementing more resources to keep the community safe and deter crime.
“IMPD has been a great partner in placing some very high-tech cameras in prime locations. We also have several new license plate readers that are in the area as well,” Dillon said. “While those can’t change it right away, they can’t predict all the time, they’re something that’s going to allow quick response from our partners at IMPD.”
“We are also working as a community to scale out a full blanket of camera coverage in Broad Ripple. So, you know that if you’re somebody who’s going to come in here and you have any type of mal-intent, then that is going to be caught on camera,” she added, “and we will depend on IMPD, and our prosecutor, to make sure that any type of offenses that are captured there are fully prosecuted.”
During last week’s public safety walk, Dillon said they also talked about a variety of other concerns, including littering, filling storefronts and even addressing car break-ins, which is an issue other communities are also seeing outside of Broad Ripple.
“We’re working with a lot of our parking lots to enhance lighting, as well as additional patrols from IMPD in certain areas to make sure that if these things are happening, we’re able to quickly respond to them,” she said.
FOX59 also reached out to City-County Councilor Keith Potts, who represents the Broad Ripple area, to get his comments on the violence and efforts to address safety in the area, but did not receive a response.