Saturday, July 17, 2010

Multiple People Shot Downtown During Black Expo Tonight

At least two people have been shot downtown tonight during the Black Expo celebration according to Fox59 News shortly after a teen event ended at Conseco Fieldhouse. Two separate shootings took place at the corner of Maryland and Illinois Street in front of the Steak-N-Shake and at Meridian and Capital Streets. Two victims have been taken to Methodist and Wishard Hospitals.

UPDATE: Radio talk show host Abdul Hakim Shabazz is reporting there are 7 shooting victims on his twitter site, including a 10-year-old. Shootings and criminal activity have become synonymous downtown with this event each year, particularly the second weekend of the event. WTHR is also confirming there are 7 shooting victims. Last weekend, a teen-ager was shot in the leg along the canal downtown as Black Expo kicked off its first weekend events. It doesn't look like Mayor Greg Ballard's crime prevention grant to Black Expo is doing much to prevent crime at this year's event.

UPDATE II: WISH-TV is now reporting there are 8 9 10 shooting victims. Live coverage showed a number of persons being arrested as numerous fights broke out downtown in the aftermath of these shootings. A tenth person waas shot  near the corner of Illinois and Market Streets following the first two shootings.

UPDATE III: Luckily, none of the shootings appears to have resulted in life-threatening injuries. Here's what the AP is saying:

Three separate shootings left 10 people wounded and scattered hundreds during an opening burst of gunfire in downtown Indianapolis during the crowded Indiana Black Expo, police said early Sunday.


Police spokesman Lt. Jeff Duhamell said authorities made no immediate arrests directly tied to the shootings and investigators were seeking leads to the suspects.

None of the victims' injuries were life-threatening, Duhamell told The Associated Press, adding that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department had made three unrelated arrests on weapons charges . . .
 
Duhamell said the shooting victims were all males between 10 and 18 years old. He said most were taken to Wishard and Methodist hospitals, where they were in good condition early Sunday. One person was treated at the scene.


Authorities say none of the shootings occurred at venues playing host to Black Expo activities, but police patrolling amid the crowd moving about the Downtown area quickly converged on the scene.

"It's pretty unusual to have this many shots in one time. It's very unfortunate," Duhamell said.
Duhamell said investigators had no immediate report on a possible motive but were trying to determine if any of the shootings were gang-related.


He said hundreds of officers had been assigned to policing the 10-day event, which concludes today.

I noticed during coverage of Black Expo's summer celebration events that there were very few people who showed up for the Teen Bling event at Conseco Fieldhouse where the Colts' Reggie Wayne and the NBA's Greg Odom were playing in a basketball game. News of last night's shooting is making national headlines. CNN has a story here, MSNBC has a story here, CBS has a story here and Fox News has a story here. With all of the talk of building the City's image during the latest give-away to the Indiana Pacers, one has to wonder whether this kind of national media coverage does harm to our city's reputation. I would also like to see a report on how much police over-time is costing us for this event. Reports indicated there were more than 300 police officers patrolling downtown last night.

19 comments:

Indy4U2C said...

I wonder what Steven Clay would say about this violence? Oh, I forgot, Clay stands with the "No Justice, NO PEACE!" signs....

Will Clay's newly formed ministers alliance pay Al Sharpton to come back immediately and speak about violence in the black community??????

Will T. Garrett "Collection Plate" Benjamin march on Expo with renowned Black Panther Mmoja Ajabu and threated that if they don't get more the shooting will continue?

Will the Public Safety Director take all just and proper action and terminate the continued events that are the catalyst for the multiple shootings???

Downtown Indy said...

I think it's time to move the start times for these events up earlier in the day. The cover of darkness seems to bring out the bad folks. The events should be wrapped up by 9pm while it's still light out.

Blog Admin said...

DI, I think I agree. Downtown was a mess tonight. But the bars and clubs will fight you tooth and nail over it.

M Theory said...

I'm wondering if there were frequent shootings associated with GenCon if we would still allow the event to be hosted in Indy.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Actually, most restaurants and bars experience business loss during the event. Most of the people hang out on the streets and don't patronize the downtown bars and restaurants. I know the event's sponsor got upset a few years ago because some would close for summer repairs or cleaning during the second week of Black Expo. A manager at one of the restaurants told me he always experienced a problem of workers calling in sick during this weekend.

Downtown Indy said...

IS, if we believe the news coverage, this was essentially an under-21 crowd that the bars and clubs wouldn't care about.

Although, maybe that's where all the moms and dads go after dropping their kids off on a street corner.

Southsider said...

Interesting that the Star put these 3 shootings on page A14 but ran a City/Pacer story on Page 1.
The 10 yr old victim was he with parent(s) or just hanging out?

M Theory said...

If I worked in the middle of all that I would call in sick too. It sounds like chaos and I don't put myself in the middle of chaos if I can help it.

I don't blame anyone who works downtown for not going to work with so much violence in the streets.


I am sad for the reputation of Indianapolis today. Professional sports teams are obviously more important to the city (and her newspaper) than our youth and violence in our community.

Imagine what we could do with that $30 million forked over to that billionaire.

M Theory said...

There's a deer hunter expo this weekend in Alabama full of gun nuts.

Not a single shooting. Imagaine that.

Anonymous said...

Here is how much this costs us, at a minimum:
300 officers. Say 280 are working OT. Top out IMPD pay is now $62K/year, or $29/hour. Time and half pay is $44/hour. Say they work from 1800 till 0200, or eight hours. Payout for OT alone would be just under $100K.

The thing is, that $100K is a drop in the bucket compared to what healthcare costs will be treating all those who were shot. An ambulance ride is now $1,000ish, and that goes up the more supplies they use. A 15-min. visit to the ER costs my employer another $1,000. So that is $2,000 per person shot minimum. Obviously, we have gunshots, so may as well say $10K per person shot, with some cases running into the tens of thousands? So $100K for the extra cops, and another $100K (being very conservative here) for medial treatment if these kids don't have health care.

Gary R. Welsh said...

Don't forget the cost of defending silly lawsuits that will be filed claiming police just stood there and watched people get shot. We can recover some of those costs by simply cancelling the useless crime prevention grant Ballard has been doling out to Black Expo from money raised by that income tax increase of Peterson's he claimed he opposed but then made permanent.

Concerned Taxpayer said...

This is the reason many large cities refuse to sponsor or allow these events.

Covenant60 said...

Doesnt this kind of stuff happen every year at Black Expo?

Most non-blacks know when to avoid downtown (mid July) because of this.

I understand that IBE is a real loss leader for downtown restaurants, etc.

And in Oakland when teh verdict in that shooting case was about to come down at 5pm, downtown businessed closed early and let their employees go home early.

On FOX 59 last night, some black kid was behing the live reporter flashing gang signs. LOL

The black community needs to look in the mirror.

Brizzonator said...

Wow, Mr. Blowhard ( I mean Ballard) will have to call Hirons and give them a big contract to promote the Convention District as SAFE...

Sorry, but I guarantee the taxpayers lose money on a 10 day event requiring such intense security measures wherein on this night more than a 1/3 of the department is on duty...

Have our esteemed Governor loan Gary, IN money and let them take over BLACK EXPO...

Can ICVA and the CIB produce a P and L for this "Project/Event"... There are no causasians comfortable being downtown spending ANY of their OWN hard earned money.

Perhaps the CIB can hire the Flunky consultants again to explain to us "dumb taxpayers" the Ecomomic Impact...

Remember the Car Craft Street Machine Nationals which were driven out of town due to all the criminal activity.

Black Expo should be shown the door as well before next year a number of MURDERS occur... Wake up Mr. Straub and Mr. Blowhard and get off the CRACKPIPE...

Indy4U2C said...

Indy Student: The bars downtown will celebrate the termination of Black Expo.

More patrons, nobody killed, nobody shot, no vandalism...

Gary R. Welsh said...

Someone showed me some reports from the War Memorial Commission a couple of years ago that detailed the damage/trashing of the American Legion Mall each year during the concert on the last night of Black Expo. They wind up spending far more cleaning up and repairing all of the damage done during the concert than what is paid to use the space. If it were any other event, it would have long ago been cancelled, but because of racial backlash concerns, they simply take their lumps and let them go on trashing it every year.

Marycatherine Barton said...

So far all I have heard was that there was just one shooter, who did all this mayhem on other youth, a fourteen year old, name undisclosed, who police expect to arrest by Monday. We shall seerom

What I gathered from the televised press conference of the mayor, he was more concerned with the downtown losing business and the reputation of the city (of him), than with the pain and suffering of the young shooting victims.

CircleCityScribe said...

Chicago news reported the events in Indy today...10 shot at BLACK EXPO!

-Must wonder if it belongs in Gary...

guy77money said...

The parents that care about their kids either escort them to the events or better yet stay at home on the weekend events at night. Yes it's time to either end the event or schedule no events after 9 P.M. and block off downtown and do not allow any kids 18 and under to be unescorted. Then run in all the kids who have no escorts. Yeah that will happen! ;) Peterson was the one who started the no harm (look the other way guys) no foul rule for the police to abide by.