Jill Disis

jill.disis@indystar.com

Students around Marion County could start seeing a crime-fighting face coming to Indianapolis this fall most familiar to an older crowd: McGruff the trenchcoat-wearing crime dog.

Officials from the Indianapolis chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police on Monday announced plans for crime-prevention programs, including the reintroduction of McGruff, geared toward elementary, middle and high school students.

Rick Snyder, vice president of the Indianapolis FOP chapter, announced the programs at a local kickoff event for National Child Abuse Prevention Month. While they have yet to be fully funded, Snyder said they will focus on four topics: gun safety, bullying prevention, drug awareness and gang awareness.

“We keep seeing a lot of municipalities and police departments that can’t afford to support those programs any longer because of tighter budgets,” Snyder said, adding that the FOP saw the lack of programs as an opportunity to step in and help.

While the programs will be targeted at children of all ages, many kids, at least of a younger set, will get to take crime-prevention classes with mascots such as McGruff, created by the National Crime Prevention Council, and Eddie Eagle, who is part of a National Rifle Association firearm safety curriculum geared at children ages 4 to 9.

The drug- and gang-awareness programs would be geared toward middle-schoolers, while high school students would focus on anti-bullying, Snyder said. The length of each program varies. Some will be conducted as one-day programs, while others are spread across multiple days.

While Snyder said the FOP would like to introduce the programs to at least five schools this fall as part of a pilot program, the organization has yet to acquire all of the funds needed. The McGruff and Eddie Eagle costumes alone, Snyder said, cost $2,500 to $3,000 each. The total cost for everything Snyder said the FOP would like to accomplish is about $10,000.

Snyder would not reveal how much money the FOP has raised so far, though he said the organization was reaching out to community businesses to help fund the programs.

The FOP announcement comes on the heels of several local crime prevention programs introduced by other city and community leaders over the past two months.

Last month, Mayor Greg Ballard outlined a new campaign called "Your Life Matters," which he characterized as a community-led initiative that officials hope will motivate at-risk youths to get off the streets and find jobs or volunteer programs. The campaign is specifically geared toward black-on-black violence.

IMPD also recently announced it was expanding a pilot program aimed at helping ex-offenders leaving prison get better acclimated in their neighborhoods.

And Public Safety Director Troy Riggs introduced a roundtable-like series called "Community Conversations," which he said had been in the works for months. The series began with a panel of city leaders at the Indianapolis Central Library on March 20, though Riggs said he hoped more informal sessions involving community members and district officers could begin soon. Last Wednesday, he said about 10 such meetings have been planned.

The announcements come as the city is experiencing one of its most violent periods in recent memory. Since the beginning of the year, 43 people have been killed – putting the city on pace to eclipse last year's seven-year-high homicide total of 125 such killings.

Call Star reporter Jill Disis at (317) 444-6137. Follow her on Twitter: @jdisis.