At least 80 people have been killed by guns in Indianapolis so far this year.
That data, collected from police and media reports by the Gun Violence Archive, includes homicides, suicides and accidents.
City leaders have spent years working on a strategy to reduce the shootings. That includes Indy Peace, a program that connects people involved in gun violence with life coaches and violence interruptors who go to the scenes of shootings to prevent further retaliation.
The Indy Public Safety Foundation, a local nonprofit, is expanding that strategy in 2027 with a violence reduction council — a public health model where community organizations and agencies review specific shootings across the city and make policy recommendations.
What is a violence reduction council?
A violence reduction council is a group that does in-depth reviews of gun homicides and shootings to understand what happened and prevent future violence. That includes looking at the years of a person’s life leading up to the shooting, risk factors, the environment and the victim’s and perpetrator’s histories.
The model was developed by Mallory O’Brien, an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
“The idea is to bring people together and look at cases in real time to understand the missed opportunities for intervention,” O’Brien told Mirror Indy. “The goal is to prevent the next person from becoming a victim.”
Councils are often made up of public health officials, law enforcement, social service agencies, community corrections, school districts, coroners, prosecutors and community organizations. Together, they determine the specific types of cases to review and collect data about what happened.
Get the backstory
Mary Alexander, who is the vice president of the Indy Public Safety Foundation that works to decrease gun violence, said it’s similar to review boards that look into infant and maternal deaths during or after childbirth.
“After the situation happens,” she said, “we look at everything that built up to that person being involved in gun violence.”
Key factors include someone’s education, neighborhood, employment, housing, substance use and prior experience with the criminal justice system. Councils also look for trends in the timing and locations of shootings.
At the end of the review process, members make recommendations. Examples from other cities include creating protection programs for crime victims and witnesses, using an assessment to identify potential perpetrators and victims, analyzing illegal firearm purchases and changing city ordinances at locations where gun violence has occurred.
Milwaukee was the first place to adopt the model. City leaders have credited it and other programs with a 30% decrease in homicides and 27% decrease in nonfatal shootings during the first half of 2026. Those rates show violence is falling since 2025.
What would it look like in Indianapolis?
Alexander said the Indy Public Safety Foundation plans to start a violence reduction council here sometime in 2027. It would primarily be funded by grants and private donations.
The biggest cost, Alexander said, is hiring a staff member to facilitate meetings and work with agencies and community organizations who join the council. She expects the group to pick a handful of cases to review each year. That’s much more involved than the city’s weekly shooting review, where law enforcement and community partners meet to look at current trends.
“We need to do a deep dive,” Alexander said. “It’s not just that this person was shot on this day in this neighborhood. We will look at what happened in their life before they got to this point of being involved in gun violence, and how we could’ve stopped it.”
If community organizations want to get involved in the council or planning process, they can contact the Indy Public Safety Foundation at info@indypsf.org.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations. Sign up for our free newsletters.
Mirror Indy reporter Mary Claire Molloy covers health. Reach her at 317-721-7648 or email maryclaire.molloy@mirrorindy.org. Follow her on X @mcmolloy7.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
