Indiana

Floor Speech

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Mr. BANKS. The mayor of Indianapolis put out, frankly, a very weak statement that didn't even mention Brett's name, and so I wanted to come down to the floor, as we kick off this week and our legislative business, and talk about who he was but also talk about what is happening in our capital city in Indianapolis in my State.

Brett's murder is the second murder in downtown Indianapolis in less than a week. Just before the Indianapolis 500, Gregory Anderson, a father of five children, was murdered in the downtown bar district in Indianapolis. And then last Sunday, a 16-year-old teenager was murdered in the northwest side of Indy. These murders have no place in Indiana, especially in our capital city.

Indianapolis is truly a great city. It has so much going for it. Indy is home to the Indianapolis 500, headquarters for the NCAA, the home of great businesses and their headquarters like Eli Lilly, world-class sporting events, and other conferences and events that take place there like the Indy 500 last week--so much more going for it.

But what is happening in Indianapolis right now is a crisis. Soft-on- crime policies are ruining this great city. How much longer will we allow this to go on?

The reason Indianapolis is plagued by violent crime is because Marion County lets it happen. Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears refuses to prosecute violent criminals.

For example, 1 man in Indiana has faced over 30 criminal charges-- most of them felony charges in Marion County since 2020. This man should be locked up forever, but he is not, thanks to Ryan Mears--the prosecutor--and liberal judges and all of their soft-on-crime policies.

And the rest of Indiana--especially the nearly 60 percent of all Hoosiers who live in the ``donut'' counties around Indianapolis and Marion County--the rest of them are punished for Marion County's refusal to do anything about it.

Ryan Mears is a prosecutor gone rogue. He refuses to keep violent criminals behind bars, and he is a failure--an absolute failure--of a prosecutor.

But it is not only the prosecutor that refuses to enforce the law. State Senator Andrea Hunley--also a Democrat--recently said with regard to crime in Indianapolis that ``we are not going to ever enforce our way out of the problem.''

That is not only a lie, it is a total excuse. If we keep making excuses for why we can't enforce the law and keep violent criminals in prison, we will never have safe neighborhoods and communities, and innocent people like Brett will continue to pay the price.

Everyone wants to talk about fairness and dignity and legal protections for criminal defendants, but what about Brett? Where was his fairness? Why do we talk about the dignity of criminals and never about the dignity of their victims?

We know how to keep our cities and our communities safe: We need to put large amounts of police officers on patrol. Let them do their job and ensure that criminals remain in prison. It is really as simple as that, but it is the opposite that keeps happening.

A violent criminal who set a bus on fire in Indianapolis a few years ago was in and out of prison over 45 times in less than two decades. This is outrageous and completely unacceptable. But this is the world that soft-on-crime policies in Indianapolis and other big soft-on-crime cities enable.

Law and order are necessary for any country or city to run well. And for there to be law and order, you need law enforcement officers who proudly wear the uniform and badge and rise up every morning to protect their communities. Those law enforcement officers need our support to do their jobs.

We are now just a couple of weeks away from National Police Week. Our Federal, State, and local police officers are heroes--truly. They wake up every single day with the hope of serving their communities well and safely returning back to their families. They love what they do, and they want to keep all of us safe while they are doing it. But we need to make sure that they are not being sabotaged by soft-on-crime policies and politicians.

Nothing will ever bring back Brett. And if we hope to prevent more young lives like this one from being taken far too early, we need to double down on our efforts to enforce law and order.

We need to support our law enforcement officers and demand that our elected officials throw the book at violent criminals instead of letting them continue to cause mayhem and violence in our communities.

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