A day after Mayor Joe Hogsett presented the city’s proposed 2026 budget, IMPD Chief Chris Bailey sat down with reporters to discuss some of the challenges facing his department.
Bailey was appointed chief of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department in February 2024, at a time when community members raised concerns about violent crime and an increase in police shootings.
Since then, he’s focused on retaining and recruiting officers to the force, building community trust and focusing on “the small number of people, places and behaviors that contribute to violent crime.”
Here’s what else Bailey had to say.
On staffing
The 2026 budget includes funding for more than 1,743 officers, even though there are only 1,461 officers on staff.
IMPD has struggled to hit its recruitment goals in recent years despite offering sign-on bonuses and one of the highest starting salaries for a police officer in the Midwest.
Any unspent money that would have gone towards new officers gets allocated to pay for officers to work overtime, mainly at events that draw large crowds to Indy, Bailey said.
The chief acknowledges that the department is “still not exactly where we want to be” in terms of filling vacant positions:
“This last class had one of our highest numbers we’ve had in a few years, so we’re hopeful that we’re seeing the tide turn across the country. I see cities having record numbers of police recruits in their academies, in places that are similar size cities to us. So that tide is turning a little bit, but it’s going to take us a while here to get it moving.
“We’re going to have three classes next year, hopefully two lateral classes as well, so five opportunities to bring on sworn staff in 2026 and beyond. Hopefully the mayor’s commitment to honoring the labor agreements sends a message that public safety is still a priority in our city, and this is a place where you want to come work.”
Get the backstory
Highlights from Mayor Hogsett’s $1.7B Indy budget proposal
The mayor did not seek a tax increase as most departments faced modest cuts.
On ICE
In July, as the Trump administration ramped up its mass deportation efforts, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement began offering six-figure salaries and $50,000 sign-on bonuses for the agency’s former employees who return to the department.
On average, the salary for new ICE deportation officers ranges from $50,000 to $90,000 per year.
Bailey was asked whether he thought young people who might be considering a career in law enforcement may become more incentivized to join ICE:
“That’s always a big concern of ours when you see those big numbers. We tried hiring bonuses a couple years ago. It didn’t work for us. I think that a lot of municipal police departments will tell you the same thing. Now, we weren’t offering $50,000 or $60,000 bonuses.
“And it’s not just ICE. Secret Service is allowing you to go directly into special units, so if you want to be a canine handler, and you have canine handler experience here, you can jump right into the uniform division of the Secret Service. So yeah, it’s a concern when you throw that kind of money out there that you could take potential applicants from local police departments, whether it’s the federal government or another municipal agency.
“We’ll see what happens. Not everybody can join a federal agency, not everybody can join a municipal agency, and so maybe we’ll see some of the runoff of people that don’t quite make that cut there that may be better suited to be a local police officer.”
On a potential state takeover
The Trump administration has begun deploying hundreds of National Guard members to Washington, D.C., as part of a public safety takeover in the nation’s capital.
In Indiana, Republican Gov. Mike Braun has hinted that he’s open to intervening in Indianapolis if he feels city and county leaders aren’t working hard enough to reduce violent crime.
Bailey dismissed concerns that state police could take over jurisdiction of downtown Indianapolis:
“I’ve not heard that from our governor. I have a very close relationship with (Indiana State Police) Superintendent Anthony Scott, and we have for many years had a good, close working relationship with them. They don’t have any more staffing than we do to police Indianapolis in a way that maybe people believe that they should be. They will always be supportive of us for major events when we ask for their help. They have committed to helping us have extra troopers in downtown Indianapolis. They’re not there at the moment. They also have to police the (Indiana) State Fair for two weeks, right? But anytime I’ve called, whether it’s (former State Police Superintendent) Doug Carter or Superintendent Scott, they’ve always been open to that.
“So no, I have no concerns about that. We’re not in a position that some of these other cities are in, and (Washington) D.C. is high profile. Obviously, they’re considered a sanctuary city. I think that’s where that focus remains.
“Downtown represents about 6% of our total crime in the city of Indianapolis, and every crime category for the last three years has gone down in our city, so I don’t expect that to happen. There’s been no talk about any of that.”
On the new curfew policy
The City-County Council passed a new curfew law aimed at keeping children off the streets late at night.
The law came in response to a mass shooting downtown that left two children dead and injured five others this summer.
Bailey applauded the effort while noting that the city has seen reductions in criminal homicides and violent crime in recent years.
Here’s what Bailey had to say about the new law:
“I told the councilors that we would work with them and whatever proposal they come up with. I was happy to see that they felt as strongly about doing something in our community as I did.
“Now that it’s passed, our legal department is going to start putting that guidance together, what it looks like for our officers knowing that you can’t do both: You can’t enforce the state (curfew) law and the local ordinance at the same time, and the directions to our officers is the same. This is not a tool for mass sweeps or mass detentions. This is a scalpel type of tool we want them to use to address specific issues.
“This summer, we started a report of juvenile activity downtown. Our crime analysts give a report every week. We get arrests, locations where we see issues, what those issues are, and the reports continue to show less and less disruptive activity late at night. Anyone should be welcome to come downtown and follow the rules and enjoy the activities and go home the way you showed up.
“There’s some things we’re going to do proactively going forward, especially on major events when we know there’s a potential of larger groups of people coming downtown, that we did leading up to WNBA (All-Star Weekend), that we should have probably done leading up to July 4, not knowing that we were going to have the issues. In the future, we’ll do increased juvenile probation visits that includes looking at what active detention orders, which would be a warrant for an adult, are active for juvenile offenders who have violent crimes — dangerous possession of a weapon, robbery, those type of things. There weren’t that many of those, but we did send teams out to take those juveniles into custody leading up to some of our major events, and use it also as an opportunity to talk to parents.
“Frankly, it’s beyond just a curfew. That’s a tool. It’s not the only tool. There are bigger issues that we have to address as a society, and then we need some help from the juvenile court. They have to start sharing more information with us, and we’re working on that, and in order for us to intervene and prevent these things from happening, we have to know where these kids are, where they go to school, who their parents are, so that we can send social services there to try to intervene in advance so that we don’t have to deal with them.”
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Peter Blanchard covers local government. Reach him at 317-605-4836 or peter.blanchard@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @peterlblanchard.
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