INDIANA – On Monday, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) delivered remarks on the Senate floor about the senseless murder of 23-year-old Brett Scrogham and the urgent need for Indianapolis to end soft-on-crime policies that have enabled violent crime.
See remarks below:
“Madam President,
23-year-old Brett Scrogham of Greenwood, Indiana had a bright future ahead of him. After graduating as a top 100 student from the IU Kelley School of Business, Brett had plans to invest in housing properties and help his community grow and prosper. As a young child, Brett helped a neighbor rescue her dogs from a terrible house fire.
Friends of his referred to him as “a God-fearing Christian man,” who was always willing to help people.
Though I never had the chance to meet him, it’s clear to me that Brett was really an incredible person. And now I’ll never get the chance to meet this bright young man.
Tragically, Brett was murdered in cold blood this weekend on his way to an Indians game with his family. The killing took place in a parking garage next to the biggest church in Indianapolis. College students and young families park there every week.
I am heartbroken by this senseless act of violence. Brett’s family is in my thoughts and prayers, and I hope that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department will arrest the murderer soon, who is still at large.
The Mayor of Indianapolis put out a weak statement that didn’t even mention Brett’s name, and so I wanted to come down to the floor and talk about who he was and what’s happening in Indianapolis.
Brett’s murder is the second murder in downtown Indianapolis in less than a week. Just before the Indy 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.
Mr. President, these murders have no place in Indiana, especially in our capital city. Indianapolis is truly a great city, and it has so much going for it. Indy is home to incredible businesses, world-class sporting events like the Indy500, which took place last week, and so much more.
But what’s been happening in Indianapolis is an epidemic. 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 that Marion County lets it happen. Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears refuses to prosecute violent criminals.
For example, one 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’s not, thanks to Ryan Mears, liberal judges, and all of their soft-on-crime policies.
And the rest of Indiana is punished for Marion County’s refusal to act.
Ryan Mears is a prosecutor gone rogue. He refuses to keep violent criminals behind bars and is an absolute failure as a prosecutor.
And it’s not only the prosecutor who refuses to enforce the law. State Sen. Andrea Hunley, also a Democrat, recently said about crime in Indianapolis that “We are not going to ever enforce our way out of the problem.”
That is not only a lie; it’s also an 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, 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 the dignity of their victims?
We know how to keep our cities safe: we need to put large numbers of police officers on patrol, let them do their job, and ensure that criminals remain in prison.
But the opposite 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 the last two decades! This is outrageous and completely unacceptable. But this is the world that soft-on-crime policies in Indianapolis enable.
Law and order are necessary for any country 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 every morning to protect their communities. Those law enforcement officers need our support to do their jobs well.
Mr. President, we are now a couple of weeks after National Police Week. Our federal, state, and local police officers are heroes. They wake up every single day with the hope of serving their communities and safely returning to their families. They love what they do and want to keep all of us safe.
But we need to make sure that they are not being sabotaged by soft-on-crime policies.
Nothing will ever bring back Brett. And if we hope to prevent more young lives like his 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 in our communities.
I yield the floor.”
