“Good morning, sir,” he tells a man in a navy suit.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he tells a woman clutching a green Starbucks tumbler.
“Doing okay, big bro?” he asks a man with shaggy gray hair who often sleeps on the sidewalk. The man nods, pausing to fumble for something in the pouch of his hoodie. He offers up a cigarette.
“Thank you,” Person says, slipping it into his pocket, next to the radio he rarely uses. “Stay safe.”
Stay safe. Why wouldn’t he? This is Person’s 156th Thursday morning at the corner of Market and Pennsylvania, his 156th Thursday morning of witnessing no violence.
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 came about four months after George Floyd’s murder ignited protests and riots nationwide, and Indianapolis faced what the local 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 in a red jacket emblazoned with the words “SAFETY AMBASSADOR.”
He is supposed to be a pedestrian whisperer — someone who greets visitors, gives directions, answers questions and listens to concerns. He irons his khakis and shaves his head to a gleam, aiming for an air of professionalism. He carries no gun. His main strategy: to show calm in the face of what he sees as paranoia.
Like other cities across the country, 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 the bigger barrier.
People got spooked when homicides shot up across the country during the pandemic, dominating newscasts. And while killings dropped in 2022, according to the latest FBI figures, 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 our communities are getting more dangerous hit a five-decade high last year, a Gallup poll found, though violent attacks were generally far more common in the ’90s.
In cities about the same size as Indianapolis, the average rate of violent crime has remained more or less level over the last five years, as determined by a Washington Post analysis of data from 70 municipalities. But property offenses such as vandalism, burglary and auto theft surged by 17 percent this summer, compared to the same period in 2020.
The latest police reports on downtown Indy have every category of crime dipping over the last 12 months.
“Outdated narratives can shape the way people feel,” said Taylor Schaffer, president of Downtown Indy, Inc., a nonprofit partnering with the city. The team of seven Safety Ambassadors is meant to help soothe those nerves.
Person, 58, doesn’t follow crime statistics or watch the news. He doesn’t vote, either. Coverage, for him, has gotten too grim.
“I don’t let people tell me what to believe,” he says. “They’ll say the sky is purple when I’m looking right at it, and it’s blue.”
The sun is up, streaking the blue sky pinkish. Person starts his loop of Mile Square, the heart of downtown, moving slowly to “walk with purpose” — his mantra — and maintain energy over the next eight hours.
“There’s no reason to be in a hurry,” he says. “Nothing to run away from.”
A half-hour drive away, people see it differently. Nelson and Donna Baxter used to love coming into the city to eat at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. Since that “terrible night” after Floyd’s murder, the couple have opted against making the trek.
“The city looked like a war zone,” says Nelson, 74, a mechanical engineer. “All the busted-out windows.”
They’d rather relax under the oak trees of Hummel Park, in the suburb of Plainfield, as their 6-year-old grandson dashes around a playground. Not a piece of trash in sight. They can dine out at the barbecue joint by their house.
“We don’t live in great fear,” Nelson says, “but you finally get disgusted.”
Across town, at an outdoor shopping mall, Colleen Tuttle is reaching mile three of her morning power walk. These days, when she ventures into downtown Indy, she tells friends she won’t stay past midafternoon.
“Even though I’m fit and healthy, I’m scared,” says the 63-year-old waitress and house cleaner. All the “defund the police” talk only emboldened criminals and forced officers to be “so timid and careful,” she says. “People think they can get away with so much more now.”
Civic boosters are up against the conversation on local radio programs like “Kendall and Casey,” which features a duo who regularly talk politics and say they “hate everyone equally.” Their guest one recent morning was Jason Hammer, another personality at 93.1 WIBC.
No one had anything good to say about downtown.
“You can’t walk to a Colts game,” Hammer, 46, told listeners. “You can’t walk to a Pacers game without walking over a homeless person on the ground or somebody offering you drugs on the street.”
Casey Daniels, 53, weighed in. Weeks earlier, she’d decided to pay $40 for stadium parking rather than walk 10 minutes from the studio. “It was nighttime, and I was with a girlfriend,” she explained.
“I don’t blame you,” replied Rob Kendall, 39. “I’m just saying that is how pathetic it is. You have a parking pass right near the stadium, and it is so unsafe down here that you said, ‘Here is $40 so I can live.”
Kendall, who lives northwest of the city, has commuted in for the last seven years. He used to linger after work and occasionally grab a beer at Kilroy’s Bar & Grill.
Now, he said, he doesn’t feel at ease until his silver Nissan Versa rolls onto the highway exit ramp.
“It makes me sick!” Hammer responded.
The Safety Ambassador is turning toward Monument Circle in the city center when a man on a bicycle stops in front of him.
“Just so you know,” the man says, “there are two guys openly dealing drugs right behind that building.”
Person glances in the direction the man is pointing.
“Thank you for letting me know, sir,” he says.
The radio in his back pocket only connects to the six other Safety Ambassadors on patrol. They don’t tend to barge in on drug deals.
Person envisions himself more as an agent of deterrence, betting that most people won’t break the law around someone dressed like a security guard. He’s supposed to call the police in the event of an emergency, and over the last three years, he has dialed that number only three times — once when someone collapsed on the pavement during an overdose, and twice when people in the throes of apparent psychotic episodes were yelling too closely at pedestrians.
“It’s nothing new,” he says. “The usual city stuff.”
He saw the same stuff back when he was a pizza server, a line cook, a landscaper and, until coronavirus closures hit, a marble floor technician. What’s new, he says, is that poverty and despair have become tougher to ignore. When the number of “haves” heading downtown for work shrank, the presence of “have-nots” became more obvious. He doesn’t see them as dangerous. He calls them “the greatest survivalists.”
“Sometimes people forget that we are all human beings,” he says.
Person knows he could have been a have-not, too. Luckily, the city needed workers to power-wash graffiti off its limestone buildings at the height of the office shutdowns. He found the labor satisfying and befriended business owners who always seemed happy to see him. They recommended him this year for a hospitality award, which he won.
He won’t be calling the police this morning. Person could tell the man on the bike had wanted him to intervene, but he’s sticking with his snap assessment: not an emergency, “no aggression toward commuters.”
Yet if those guys had dealt drugs right in front of him?
“I’d say, ‘Be cool, man,’” he explains. “‘What are you doing?’”
It’s 9:30 a.m. now. A couple of miles down. Person stops to straighten two toppled Lime scooters. A security camera outside a bar points down at him. Dozens of new cameras have appeared since the city began offering grants to businesses this year for surveillance equipment that police can access in real time — yet another push to make people feel safer, just like the hotline for commuters to request an escort from their car. Person would assume that duty, but the phone almost never rings.
He passes a Shake Shack that should open soon for lunch. He passes a chain-link fence plastered with bubble letters that say: I’M SO HAPPY TO SEE YOU HERE. He passes a man sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk who looks up at him and mumbles something incomprehensible.
“Okay, brother,” Person responds. “Have a good day.”
He’s nearing the Brazilian steakhouse Fogo de Chão when someone he’s never seen before comes up.
“They won’t stop harassing me,” says the man, whose gray basketball shorts are smeared with what looks like grease.
“The police,” the man replies.
He says his name is Michael. He’s 44 and says he hasn’t been able to take his schizophrenia medicine in six months and hasn’t eaten in four days.
“Can you help me?” Michael asks.
Of course, Person replies.
There’s a church on Georgia Street that serves free breakfast. And at 11:30, a group of social workers and clinicians usually meets at the circle near the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which is hard to miss, considering it’s almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty. The group roams the business district, offering aid to people dealing with mental illness or drug addiction.
“You remember where Starbucks used to be?” Person asks.
“Just head over there. I’ll be around, too, and they’ll help you with whatever you need, okay?”
“Okay,” Michael says, though he doesn’t look too sure.
Person watches him cross the street and pulls out his phone to call the social worker he knows best. She’s not coming out today, but others will be there soon, she assures him.
He walks another uneventful mile, hoping he’ll be able to spot them. Finding help for Michael would be a win-win: Someone gets off the street, and Person is spared a potential meltdown that might scare passersby.
Time to take a break on a bench outside the police station. He lights the cigarette from the shaggy-haired man before deciding to stop by a comic book store on his circuit. The co-owner is a friend.
“People think we are in a Mad Max hellscape,” says Doug Stephenson, 56, who splits his time between the downtown shop and his two other locations, in the suburbs. Some of his golfing buddies there refuse to visit him here. “Like there’s a growing adversarial relationship between people who live in cities and people who live in suburbs,” Stephenson says. He’s a suburbanite himself.
Person shrugs. That sounds political, and he doesn’t talk politics.
He moves on toward the Solders and Sailors Monument, scanning a new synthetic-grass park at the circle. There’s a ping-pong table, cornhole boards and a giant pile of foam building blocks for kids — all in use. A line forms at a food truck selling apple-cider-flavored doughnuts.
Is his presence downtown helping? Person likes to think so. People still look happy to see him. He sits at a picnic table, quietly taking it all in. A woman tossing bean bags into a cornhole board pauses to wave at him.
It’s 11:30 now. He spots the clinicians, thanks to their name tags, outside the closed Starbucks.
“Hey, guys,” he says, introducing himself. He clues them in about Michael, who has yet to show up.
“I hope his schizo didn’t kick in,” Person says.
After a few minutes, they all have to move on.
Person passes a Potbelly Sandwich Shop, a Steak ’n Shake and a restaurant where someone has scrawled drink specials in pink chalk on the sidewalk. Five miles down, then six.
He loops back toward the corner of Market and Pennsylvania, where someone taps him on the shoulder from behind. It’s a guy wearing a black Salesforce backpack — probably one of the workers at the tower where Person started his day.
“Just wanted to say thank you for what you do,” the man says. “Hopefully, it makes a difference.”
It’s 2:45 p.m. now. Person’s patrol is nearing its end.
“Thank you, man,” he replies. He makes sure to smile.
John Harden in Oakland, Calif., contributed to this report.
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