Homicides haunt Indianapolis' black community

The reminders of Brian Griffie's short life are everywhere. 

His baby pictures cover the walls of his family's home. His neon blue toothbrush, bristles bone-dry, sits on the bathroom shelf. Friends still stop by to borrow his hip hop and R&B compact discs.
And there's the guest book from the 20-year-old's funeral. It's filled with hundreds of signatures. So many people wanted to sign the book, says his father, Fairley Griffie, "we had to add extra pages."
His mother, Sharon Griffie, who leads a teary-eyed, numbing tour of her son's possessions, can't believe her youngest child is gone. 

"Even though my son was shot down," she says, "I know he was loved more than he was hated."
Brian Griffie was one of 66 black males whose life ended violently last year in Marion County. Their deaths serve as a harsh reminder that although the total number of homicides continues to drop, one segment of the community remains at great risk. A black male in the state's largest county is far more likely to become a homicide statistic than anyone else. 

Black males accounted for nearly 60 percent of last year's 112 homicides. That's troubling to many experts because black males account for just 11 percent of Marion County's population. 

The facts of Griffie's death are all too common. He was young -- most of the black males killed in 2000 were younger than 30. And a bullet ended his life -- nearly all of last year's black male homicide victims were fatally wounded by gunfire. And several of the cases -- including Griffie's -- remain unsolved. 

"How do you tell a generation of young people that there's a problem out there and they need to be careful?" asks Lt. Don Bender, who works in the Indianapolis Police Department's youth service branch. 

IPD is trying to boost its contact with young people through its police activities league (PAL). Marion County Sheriff Jack Cottey says he wants more of his officers in schools talking to kids about the dangers of the street. 

"There are choices out there to be made, like PAL, like church activities. How do you do that?" Bender asks. "It's an unanswerable question, I think, until you get parents and a whole segment of society who say they won't accept that from their young people." 

As in past years, most of the violent deaths in 2000 occurred in the city's core.
Although last year's homicide figure is much lower than 1998's record-setting 162 deaths, community leaders say, there's still work to be done. 

Drugs and gang violence were not factors in every killing, but they're still a driving force in too many deaths, officials say. 

"It's not going to change until guns are put down, until people respect each other" enough to find a nonviolent solution to their disputes, and until blacks end "a sad trend," says Joe Simpson, a Northside community activist. 

The Rev. Paul Hooks agrees. 

"The thing is, it hurts so many more people than just the victim," says Hooks, a pastor at Emmanuel Free-Will Baptist Church and a recently retired Indianapolis Public Schools police officer. "It leaves a trail of sadness."
Inside the darkness of their Near-Northside apartment, Brian Griffie's parents know that sadness. They know the angst of unfulfilled dreams. 

Brian Griffie, whose nickname was "Do," had plans: he wanted to marry the mother of his infant son, to get his GED, to go to college. He had applied to work with his dad at a book distribution center.
"It's the missing him, the emptiness, the memories," Fairley Griffie says. "The community, they will never know what he had to offer." 
 
The same could be said of other homicide victims, experts say. 

IPD Assistant Chief James O. Wyatt worries that too many young people -- black and white -- are lured by the easy money of drugs and don't realize how dangerous that lifestyle can be. 

A minimum-wage job at a hamburger joint may not be as attractive as the $500-a-day drug money that can be earned on a street corner, Wyatt says. But, he notes, the minimum-wage job has its own rewards, including the promise of a long, productive life. 

He likes to tell high school students, "You don't have to do what you do." 

Authorities can do some things to reduce the number of homicides, community leaders say. 

Indianapolis funeral home director Robert Hayes thinks police should have the power to check for weapons and confiscate any that are found on any young person. Hayes says he was more vocal three years ago when Indianapolis residents were being slain in record numbers. 

But he still thinks drastic steps must be taken because the fatality rate among blacks and whites ages 22 to 30 was higher than that of any other age group last year. 

"We're just losing too many young people to violence," says Hayes, of Peoples Funeral Home. 

Kenna Davis Quinet, a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis who teaches a homicide class, thinks the unusually high fatality rate of black males is more a matter of money than of race.
"The black community is much more likely to suffer from poverty and all the social disorganization that goes with it," Quinet says. "For communities, families, schools and individuals, we can't fix the homicide problem until we fix the poverty problem." 

Richard Block, a sociology professor at Chicago's Loyola University, says black children are more apt to grow up knowing someone who was a victim of a homicide, and those violent deaths may become ingrained in their culture. 

Hooks believes that culture needs to change. 

He knows firsthand. He handled Griffie's funeral last fall. 

Griffie was shot to death Nov. 7 outside his girlfriend's Westside apartment. He had awakened sometime before 6:30 a.m. to check on his car's wailing alarm. The alarm had gone off several times overnight, but this time the shrill noise woke up Griffie's 5-week-old son. As Griffie's girlfriend tended to the baby, Griffie went outside to investigate. 

Griffie's girlfriend, 19, told police she heard several gunshots. She ran to the street, where she found Griffie lying next to his 1984 Chevrolet Caprice. She told police she saw a dark-colored car speeding away.
Indianapolis police think Griffie was ambushed, possibly by gang members. But they're not sure why. No one has been arrested, and "nobody's talking," IPD Detective Anthony Finnell said. 

Griffie's parents say their son resisted gang membership and wonder whether that led to his death.
Next month, the couple will place a marker on their son's grave. Maybe one day they'll put away his things.
Although their son's death has caused them great anguish, some good has come from something very bad: They frequently see their young grandson, and the killing inspired them to get married after dating for 27 years. 

They want to find their son's killer. They don't want Brian Griffie -- a young black male -- to be remembered only as a statistic. 

"It doesn't matter what color they are," his mother says. 

His father agrees: "It was a selfish, senseless murder."