Downtown crime debate puts focus on prosecutor’s role

High-profile crimes — including a Fourth of July weekend mass shooting in 2025 that killed two and injured five and the murder of an Indiana University graduate on his way to a baseball game this summer — have fueled outrage and concern among some members of the public and community leaders that downtown is no longer a safe place.

At the same time, rates of several violent crimes in downtown, including robbery and aggravated assault, are down year to date, according to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s Transparency Hub. The contrast between those broader crime trends and several high-profile incidents has intensified debate over downtown safety and who bears responsibility for it.

Critics direct blame toward one specific government entity: the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office and its leader, Ryan Mears. But other observers say the problem is far more complex than just what the prosecutor does.

“When people are upset about anything related to public safety or the justice system, they’re very quick to always want to criticize the prosecutor,” said Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton. “Where the prosecutor is, in fact, probably the biggest voice in that system, it is not the only voice.”

Ahead of November’s election, The Indiana Lawyer spoke to Mears, a Democrat who is seeking reelection, and challenger Philip Foust, a Republican, as well as others close to the criminal justice system to learn more about crime downtown and how the candidates are addressing the city’s needs.

Foust focuses efforts on juveniles

Foust currently serves as clerk-treasurer for the town of Speedway. But for six years, he worked under Mears and former Chief Prosecutor Terry Curry as a deputy prosecutor.

Foust says the office has lost sight of its main mission.

“Our client is the state of Indiana, so it’s our job to do the right thing. And it’s our job to enforce the law, to seek justice for victims, to protect the public,” he said. “When you start to get a sense that the office has leadership that has lost sight of that basic goal, it’s very offensive to a lot of us who care deeply about how that works.”

Foust’s concerns extend beyond downtown. If elected, he wants to tackle juvenile crime officewide. Under Curry, Foust spent a large portion of his early career prosecuting juveniles. He believes many teenagers today don’t take the system seriously because of a laissez-faire approach to discipline, with prosecutors choosing to view juveniles as victims instead of holding them accountable for their errors.

Foust wants to change that, in part by removing the “victim” mindset he said is so prevalent in juvenile court. Offenders won’t understand the significance of their actions unless they’re punished for the weight of them.

“We know you can do better. We expect more of you, and if you don’t, there’s going to be real consequences,” he said.

Mears carves out priorities

If reelected, Mears says he wants to maintain the momentum his office has gained during the last few years, specifically in the courtroom. His argument for the office’s effectiveness is based largely on its broader record prosecuting serious crimes across Marion County.

When Mears announced his run for reelection earlier this year, his campaign pointed out that in 2025, the Prosecutor’s Office achieved a 90% conviction rate for murder cases, a 100% conviction rate for child molestation cases and a 77% conviction rate for gun-related crimes.

Mears also points to individual violent-crime prosecutions as evidence of the office’s approach.

On Sept. 1, Toni McClure, the mother of 5-year-old Kinsleigh Welty, was sentenced to life without parole for the murder and criminal confinement of her daughter in 2024.

Success in the courtroom means building rapport with constituents before prosecutors need information to work a case. Mears emphasized his office’s efforts to meet with members of the community to build a sense of trust, both when things are going well and when things aren’t. He pointed to the various outreach programs his office leads, such as its annual free basketball camps.

“We want to have a relationship that is outside of a criminal case because when individuals are impacted directly by that criminal case, I don’t want that to be their first exposure or experience with the Prosecutor’s Office,” he said.

He believes standing on a commitment to limit the number of marijuana cases his office prosecutes effectively communicates that his priority is prosecuting violent crime. It’s something that resonates with the community and builds trust, he said.

Mears also expressed a desire to evolve the Prosecutor’s Office to address larger issues such as addiction, mental health problems and homelessness downtown.

“How can we, as an office, help try to solve some of those problems so we can keep people out of the criminal justice system and actually address the root cause issues that’s driving some of this behavior?” Mears said.

One issue Mears sees standing in the way of addressing the needs of the community is the state’s defunding of Marion County’s drug and reentry courts. Earlier this month, The Indiana Lawyer reported that the two problem-solving courts lost grant funding from the Indiana Department of Correction.

With this change, Mears anticipates that other players, such as the Prosecutor’s Office and the public defender agency, will now be in charge of finding solutions to provide resources to individuals reentering society after imprisonment.

Prosecutor’s office faces criticism, understanding

Mears has been the subject of criticism in local politics since he took office. Much of it is rooted in the idea that the prosecutor is not doing enough to tackle major crimes in Marion County.

There’s too much finger-pointing coming from that office, according to Rick Snyder, president of Fraternal Order of Police #86 in Indianapolis.

He brought up the Sept. 9 sentencing of Julian Wachner, who received probation after pleading guilty to possession of child sex abuse material in Marion County.

The Prosecutor’s Office said it pushed for a harsher sentence than the one given by the judge.

Snyder said it’s an ongoing trend for the prosecutor and others in power to push the blame on one another.

“He points fingers at the judges, the judges point fingers at him, then they collectively point fingers at the police,” Snyder said.

Snyder said he believes that if the office can’t punish basic crimes like child abuse, Marion County can’t start talking about quality-of-life issues like homelessness and addiction.

Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton understands firsthand the complexities of a prosecutor’s role in the larger justice system.

While a prosecutor has to build the strongest possible argument against a defendant, the outcome of the case also depends on defense attorneys and judges.

“If your prosecutor’s done things to set it up for what they believe to be, and the public would generally believe to be, an acceptable resolution, and the judge, looking at all the evidence presented, decides to go a different way, there really is not much the prosecutor can do about that,” Eaton said.

Eaton contends, however, that the criminal justice system is designed to favor plea agreements. He hesitates to villainize agreements because they sometimes come with relief for victims. For example, if an agreement means that a victim doesn’t have to face the defendant or retell their trauma to a room full of strangers in exchange for a lesser sentence, perhaps the plea agreement is better.

He said he also believes in accountability, however, and that the community should continue to keep prosecutors in check for the important work they do.

But the debate over Mears’ broader record does not necessarily reflect the experience of those operating businesses downtown. Brian Shapiro, owner of Shapiro’s Delicatessen, said crime has declined around his business in recent years, especially after several nearby bars closed, reducing incidents tied to alcohol-induced behavior.

The deli, which sits on South Meridian Street near Lucas Oil Stadium, has been in business for more than 100 years. Shapiro is a fourth-generation owner.

Over the years, Shapiro has built relationships with several community stakeholders and has seen the complexities of the justice system. From his perspective, attorney shortages and heavy caseloads are major stumbling blocks for the Prosecutor’s Office.

In August, the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council published a report examining workloads among Indiana’s prosecuting attorneys’ offices.

The report shows that the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office currently employs 160 attorneys. But given the workload for attorneys on staff, it needs about 205.

Mears anticipates bringing in nearly 20 new attorneys later this fall who are awaiting bar exam results. What qualifies as being “fully staffed” ebbs and flows depending on the number of cases the office faces, but Mears is hopeful that the new attorneys, combined with a more competitive salary structure, will position the office for progress.

“Hopefully … we can confidently say that we’re going to have all the staffing that that we need in order to move forward and prosecute and handle the cases that we have here in Marion County,” he said.•