The Safety Ambassador begins his patrol a half-hour before sunrise, trying to project what his boss calls a “soft presence.” Scott Person wants commuters starting to stream into Salesforce Tower and the National Bank of Indianapolis to feel reassured when they see him. It was Person’s 156th Thursday morning at the corner of Market and Pennsylvania, his 156th Thursday morning of witnessing no violence, the Washington Post reports. The city hired him in September 2020, when the pandemic was shuttering businesses and keeping many workers at home, turning downtown eerily quiet while the homeless population ballooned. His first shift was four months after George Floyd’s murder ignited protests and riots nationwide, and Indianapolis faced what a newspaper termed a “terrible night” of tear gas and shattered windows, prompting the police chief to warn that “downtown is not safe at this time.” People still believe downtown is not safe, so Person patrols from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. every weekday.
Like other cities, Indy has been striving to repair its image since the shutdown era. The results are mixed. Out-of-towners are booking hotels for football games and conventions at near-peak levels, but officials say suburbanites — a critical set of spenders — are still reluctant to flock downtown for work or dinner. Their hesitance reflects a wider apprehension: When researchers at the Brookings Institution interviewed more than 100 residents of New York, Chicago, Seattle and Philadelphia last year, they expected to hear that a desire to work from home was depressing travel to urban cores. Instead, they wrote, fear of crime and disorder posed a bigger barrier. People got spooked when homicide totals shot up during the pandemic, dominating newscasts. While killings dropped in 2022,Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump continues to characterize liberal cities as “going to hell,” and right-leaning talk shows keep echoing his view. The rhetoric fuels a climate of nervousness: Perceptions that communities are getting more dangerous hit a five-decade high last year, a Gallup poll found, though violent attacks were far more common in the ’90s.