John Tuohy

john.tuohy@indystar.com

Can a cop next door keep a dangerous city block or neighborhood safe? Would the officer want to move there, even if it were free?

Democrats on the City-County Council are betting the answer to both questions is yes. They unveiled a plan Wednesday to fix abandoned buildings in blighted areas and rent them to police officers free for two years.

Council member John Barth said the intent of the program was to reduce crime in dangerous neighborhoods by increasing police presence. Most Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers and Marion County sheriff’s deputies have take-home cars, so patrol cars would be a visible fixture in the neighborhoods.

After two years, the officers and deputies would have the option of buying the houses at market rate. Five houses will be targeted in a pilot program, the first in the Mapleton-Fall Creek area.

The plan has the backing of the Fraternal Order of Police and the Sheriff’s Office. Council President Maggie Lewis said "this proposal will be the cornerstone of the council's plan to ensure IMPD and sheriff resources are where they are needed most."

Council members are calling the program “Safe Neighborhoods Now” and will propose it at the July 14 City-County Council meeting. It would be funded by $1 million in leftover Rebuild Indy infrastructure dollars. If the program expanded, further funding would need to be determined, officials said.

Despite the optimism at a news conference Wednesday morning, similar programs in the past have had mixed results, both locally and nationally.

A 1997 initiative run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development called the “Officer Next Door and Teacher Next Door” shut down temporarily a few years later because of fraud and abuse by the homeowners.

The program allowed police officers and teachers to buy properties in high-crime areas at a 50 percent discount as long as they lived in the house for three years and didn’t own other property.

But a three-year investigation by HUD’s inspector general found about 30 officers nationwide were either renting out their property or sold the homes, didn’t stay there or owned other homes. At least 14 officers in Indianapolis took advantage of the program, but none of them were charged.

The program was revamped and is now called the “Good Neighbor Next Door.” It is available to firefighters as well as teachers and police. HUD spokeswoman Shantae Goodloe in Washington, D.C., and IMPD spokesman Kendale Adams said information on the number of local participants was not immediately available.

More recently, the Indianapolis Land Bank offered dilapidated houses to officers for a discounted rate of $2,500 if they repaired them. But as of 2010, only one officer had bought a home, and in 2013 the Land Bank was hit by a kickback scandal involving its employees. Officers were not involved.

Still, police officials at a news conference said the proposed local program could be a handy crime-fighting tool.

FOP Vice President Rick Snyder said the free rent could be used as incentive to recruit police cadets and improve community relations.

“This concept is absolutely a great step toward community collaboration,” Snyder said. “It will show what high police presence can mean in these neighborhoods. The presence will be a value.”

Leigh Riley Evans, the chief executive officer of the Mapleton-Fall Creek Community Development Corp., said the program could be an effective way to discourage some obvious street crimes.

“Like open air drug markets and prostitution,” said Riley-Evans, whose CDC, a nonprofit that tries to improve housing on the Northside, will help rehab the homes.

Patt Ladd, president of the Greater Citizen Coalition of the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood, said she was “all for it.”

“It would be great to have the police on the block all the time,” she said.

Ladd said there would be more subtle, long-term benefits.

“When children see a police officer just being himself, and that puts a whole new perspective on the officer, I think,” she said. “They may come to know them as people.”

Ryan Vaughn, Mayor Greg Ballard’s chief of staff, said he hasn’t been given a copy of the plan. But he noted that Ballard supports a change in the law that would require all metro officers to live in the city. Now, 241 officers of the IMPD’s roughly 1,600 officers live outside city limits.

“If the goal is to have officers live in the neighborhoods they patrol in an effort to make them safer, the first step should be asking the FOP and Sheriff’s Office to work with the state to change the law that lets officers live outside the city they serve,” Vaughn said in a written statement.

John Walton, an Indianapolis officer and president of the Minority Police Officers Association, said he and about six other officers participated in a HUD program in the early 1980s in which they lived for a time in public housing at 39th Street and Post Road for free.

“It basically stopped crime while we were there,” he said. “But when we left it went back up.”

Walton said he still firmly believes “placing officers in neighborhoods serves as a deterrent to criminal activity.”

Call reporter John Tuohy at 444-6418 and follow on Twitter @john_tuohy.