GARY — The Gary Police Department this week wrapped up a 4-year partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Assistance, ending a program that the city says is responsible for bringing violent crime down significantly and that has set the city up for continuing improvement moving forward.
The National Public Safety Partnership (PSP) was designed to help communities address violent crime through federal resources and strategies tested over time. Originally a 3-year commitment, Gary's positive direction in 2024 led to a 1-year extension.
From 2023 to 2024, homicides dropped by 23% and nonfatal shootings decreased by 10%, the city said, and investigations led to charges being filed in 77% of its homicides during that time, a higher rate than the national average of 58%.
In Gary's 2025 mid-year crime report, the city touted a continued drop in crime with nine homicides from January through June — a decrease from 20 that took place during those months a year prior. The department pressed charges in all but one of the first half of 2025's homicides.
The total number of homicides in Gary has decreased each year since 2021, according to data shared by Gary officials. Nonfatal shootings jumped from 2021 to 2022 but have steadily declined each year since.
Gary Police Department Chief Derrick Cannon, who worked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from 2018 to 2023 prior to becoming chief, said his goal early on was to use networks and partnerships with the federal government to improve the department's technology, relationships and crime analysis.
“PSP has provided the Gary Police Department with the tools, training and partnerships needed to build a smarter, data-driven approach to policing,” Cannon said. “Our officers now have access to state-of-the-art technology and stronger investigative resources, which are helping us make our community safer and restore trust.”
Perhaps the biggest impact of the PSP was the creation of the Gary Real Time Crime Center, which opened in November 2023 under former Mayor Jerome Prince with over $1 million in new technology investments, including license plate readers, video surveillance cameras, development of body-worn cameras and partnerships with local businesses to incorporate private surveillance video feeds.
The Real Time Crime Center allows officers and analysts to track suspects in real time and coordinate emergency responses more effectively and also serves as a center for disaster response and any large-scale public safety events.
Through the federal program, Gary police partnered with federal, state and local agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; U.S. Marshals Service; Indiana State Police; Lake County Prosecutor's Office; and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Indiana. The agencies met weekly, the city said, to align their investigations and "strengthen case outcomes."
“These partnerships have been critical,” Cannon said. “By coordinating across agencies and leveraging technology, we’ve improved our ability to solve crimes and prevent violence before it occurs.”
Each agency has different specialties, he said, but by utilizing the strengths of each and pulling in the same direction, it doesn't matter to him which one puts the puzzle pieces of crime together.
"Anybody can get the win as long as we're getting the goals accomplished," Cannon said. "If there's something that we can do, or something that they can do, we just put our collaborative efforts together."
Having "graduated" from the PSP program, he feels his department can now fully embed what they've learned into department policies and procedures moving forward. Gary has a unique opportunity to advise future cities that participate in the program on best practices. The city's statistical evidence of improvement because of what it has implemented over the last few years makes it a "subject matter expert," Cannon said.
"The program has definitely given us a springboard on what is contemporary, what is best practices, what is the latest and greatest that's out there to do these things with," he said. "I think all of these methods have definitely put us in a position to not only maintain the positivity that we do have, but also to build out for more capacity when we have things like the convention center coming or other venues coming to the City of Gary, so now we're on that end to see how we can fit those things into our safety platform."
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