Black men and boys account for 43 of the 67 people murdered in Indianapolis so far in 2026, or nearly two-thirds of the city’s murder victims, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
Black residents make up 27.9% of the city’s population, according to Census Bureau estimates.
The report, generated Sept. 8 by IMPD Public Affairs, lists 88 total homicide victims with incident dates running through Sept. 5. Sixty-seven are classified as murder or non-negligent manslaughter, four as negligent manslaughter and 13 as justifiable homicide. Four remain listed as death investigation-pending, the category IMPD uses for cases awaiting a determination.
Across all 88 victims, 72 are men and 16 are women. Sixty-seven are identified as Black and 21 as white. The report’s race codes do not include a separate field for Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, and at least seven victims with Hispanic surnames are coded as white.
The disparity is sharpest in the justifiable homicide category. Of the 13 people killed in incidents IMPD has classified as justifiable, 12 are Black men. The 13th is a 21-year-old white man killed in March in the 3200 block of Central Avenue.
IMPD counted 137 murders and 26 noncriminal homicides in 2025, for a total of 163, according to figures the department released in late December. WISH-TV reported at the time that the year was on track to be the city’s lowest homicide total since 2016.
The report shows 84 homicide cases assigned in 2026, of which 57 remain open. Detectives have cleared 27 cases that occurred this year, which the report puts at a clearance rate of 32.1%. They also cleared 29 cases from prior years during 2026. Combining the two, the report lists a clearance rate of 66.7%.
The clearance subtotals in that same table do not reconcile with the combined figure. The report lists 30 cases cleared by arrest and 24 exceptionally cleared, which totals 54, against a combined cleared total of 56. IMPD did not address the discrepancy in the document.
The report names 29 homicide arrestees. Twenty-three are Black men and five are white men. The lone woman and the only Asian person listed anywhere in the report is a 21-year-old arrested in a May 24 killing at South Meridian and East Chesapeake streets. Four arrestees are identified only as “Juvenile – Redacted,” the youngest of them 14.
The youngest victims listed are a 1-year-old boy killed July 11 in the 1300 block of North Delaware Street and an infant girl killed July 18 in the 3700 block of Station Street. Both cases are marked cleared by arrest. The oldest is a 65-year-old woman killed May 28 in the 00 block of North Rural Street. One victim, from a July 9 incident in the 1000 block of Henslow Lane, remains listed as unknown.
IMPD cautions that the report is drawn from year-to-date records management system data that has not been submitted to NIBRS for official reporting purposes, and that it should be considered preliminary and subject to change.
