Law Street Media ranked Carmel as the safest city in Indiana, based on June 2014 data, with Fishers, Zionsville and Westfield next in line.
The blog ranked the safest and most dangerous states in America in November 2016 and within each state ranked the safest and most dangerous cities. The results are based on the number of violent crimes, murders and overall population.
The website listed Carmel as having 15 violent crimes per 100,000 people and zero murders for that time period. Elkhart, Indianapolis and East Chicago were listed as the most dangerous cities in Indiana.
Carmel Police Chief Tim Green talked to Current in Carmel about what makes Carmel such a safe city.
What does the CPD do to make Carmel the safest in the state?
We’ve always been blessed in this community to have a city that will give us the resources to hire the people that are committed to keeping our people safe. That’s a big part of it. Along with that is the commitment of the department to train properly and never accept the status quo. We’re always growing and looking for ways to do things better. We try to be more proactive than just reactive. If we see trends or something out of the norm, we’re not waiting. We’re looking at the data and taking initiative. We’re not going to just wait for something to happen.
What kind of numbers do you look at?
As a chief of police, I’m regularly looking at what’s going on in the community daily. We look at trends in major crimes to determine any patterns. We can fluctuate, and that’s not uncommon. One year in a five-year (period) you might see a jump or drop on an annual basis, but we like to look at things daily or weekly so we can determine patterns and see where we need to put our resources. Anything out of the norm needs attention. We try to address it sooner rather than later. If we hear certain businesses are being targeted for robbery, we will put some officers out there to see if we can catch them. Again, we have supportive resources to do that and we’ve been successful a number of times.
What about the unseen or often unreported crimes, like drug abuse or domestic violence?
We know these are issues. We have a good grasp on what we respond to with domestic violence and drug addiction, but we’re also very connected to organizations in our community. We are connected to mental health organizations. We have resource officers in the schools. We have connections to organizations such as Prevail, so we are informed about what’s going on. We know there are people who might not call the police in these situations, but we try to create these connections and do outreach so people will feel comfortable reporting these crimes to police. Part of our job is also education and outreach, not just making arrests. We want to be proactive and we want to be a resource in the community.
