Thirty people huddle outside the door to Shalom Community Center at 7:58 a.m. on a chilly Thursday morning. The wind carries clouds of cigarette smoke off the porch. Some hold dog leashes, and some carry backpacks or strollers piled high with blankets and coats. Some bring nothing at all.
Inside the center, there is warmth, light and the promise of a free breakfast. Outside, it’s windy, dark and damp. Cars speed by, kicking up water from the street onto the curb. The soggy grass in front of the center is littered with cigarette butts and plastic spoons.
Cars slow as the nearby stop light turns red. Drivers illuminated by the warm glow of brake lights avert their eyes from the gathered crowd.
“The Chain” by Fleetwood Mac blares from a stopped car.
The door to the center opens at 8:01 a.m. — a minute late. Everyone filters in, and the front porch is empty within a few seconds.
Over the next hour and a half, staff will call the police twice to remove visitors from the property. People will shout back and forth on the cement porch and must be separated. Cigarettes, vapes and steaming cups of coffee will be exchanged outside as people come and go.
James Smoot comes to Phil’s Kitchen at Shalom in the mornings to get a cup of coffee. He’s not homeless, but he was four years ago. Now, he lives in a trailer home with his four young pitbulls.
He still has friends who don’t have a place to stay and helps them out whenever possible.
One of Smoot’s friends is Bobby Ballard, a man who was assaulted on Kirkwood Avenue at the end of September. Police arrested four people in connection with the assault.
“(He's) the one I’m trying to really help,” Smoot said. “Nobody’s helping.”
Multiple recent cases of violence against Bloomington’s homeless population have led to unease among the community and local advocates. While the city says the incidents aren’t targeted, some worry about the public’s attitude toward those who are homeless.
Sept. 26
On Sept. 26, a group attacked Smoot’s friend Ballard in front of The Upstairs Pub after a verbal altercation escalated.
Cell phone footage of the incident showed Ballard and another man who came to his defense, Seth Gun, involved in an altercation with multiple men. According to a police affidavit, Avery Williams and Khalil Morris were kicking and striking Ballard while he was “lying defenseless on the ground.” Williams said his actions were in self-defense after Ballard punched him in the head, the affidavit said.
Gun, a delivery driver, was working late when his last order of the night brought him to Kirkwood Avenue. He noticed the group verbally harassing Ballard, including a young man who was encouraged by his companions, he said. Gun said he saw Ballard try to walk away a few times before the boy threw the first “sucker” punch. That’s when Gun jumped in.
“I saw the homeless man kept walking away, and then the kids would keep following him,” Gun said. “I saw them kind of run up behind him, hold onto him, not let him walk away and then kinda like push him, smack his face around."
The three men and a 16-year-old were charged with battery resulting in serious bodily injury.
A GoFundMe raised over $9,000 for Ballard to get dental care after several of his teeth were knocked out during the fight.
That same night, Shawn Sullivan, another homeless man, was shot under his left armpit on West Howe Street. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Sullivan threw a bicycle at a sedan after it pulled up quickly behind him. The bike hit the back driver’s side of the car, and a man named Stephen Dixon got out of the car and pointed a gun at Sullivan, the affidavit states. As Sullivan tried to gather his things from the road, Dixon allegedly shot him and fled the scene in his car. He is charged with murder.
After Sullivan’s murder and Ballard’s attack on the same night, some worry for the safety of Bloomington’s homeless population.
Caleb Hoagland is an advocate for the homeless community in Bloomington. He offered support to a group of homeless people impacted by the Kirkwood attack, though Ballard declined. Ballard was the only homeless person who sustained injuries, but others in the area were verbally harassed and one woman was spit on.
Hoagland thinks the public attitude toward homeless people is worsening.
“Hearts are hardening, or they're becoming desensitized,” Hoagland said.
Ricky, a homeless man living in Bloomington, does not think the public’s attitude toward the homeless community has necessarily changed. He said there was a group of kids five or six years ago that threw pumpkins near people sleeping.
However, Brian Giffen, the City of Bloomington’s homelessness response coordinator, said the city’s reviews “show no indication of targeted violence against individuals based on housing status.”
“Recent downtown altercations have largely stemmed from late-night interactions that escalate, often involving intoxicated individuals and pre-existing conflict,” Giffen said in an email.
Sept. 27
Aoife Moss is a member of Help Ourselves Mutual Aid, an anti-capitalist organization that runs various programs to support the local homeless population.
“People are avoiding Kirkwood,” Moss said. “We’ve done food-serves down in People’s Park, and it’s a ghost town. You don’t see the homeless population around that area anymore.”
Giffen said in an email there are no bans on homeless people in any public space, including Kirkwood Avenue or Seminary Park.
“The City enforces laws and ordinances consistently—focused on behavior, not status,” Giffen said in an email. “The City also never asks for unhoused residents to be removed from any public spaces or parks.”
Ricky disagrees and sees the city’s attitude towards homeless people — especially those sleeping either overnight or during the day — as hypocritical.
“I thought you could go to the parks for relaxing,” he said. “You’d go kicking, you'd arrest a grandpa for sleeping at the mall when he takes his nap?”
There are several more permanent encampments in Bloomington where homeless people live. Sometimes the city clears them out, which Hoagland thinks does more harm than good.
“It makes for a good photo op, but you're just — we're just spending our resources to destroy everyone's worldly possessions and arrest a couple people,” Hoagland said. “And at the end of the day, it doesn't help homelessness, it doesn't help anyone. But it costs the taxpayers a lot of money.”
But Ricky thinks the city’s attitude toward the homeless population is becoming more hostile.
“I've been arrested, like, 17 times for trespassing, because I slept on porches and places,” Ricky said. “And their trick is, they come and trespass you from every single place. I just got trespassed last night because I was standing on the sidewalk in front of that parking garage.”
The day after Ballard was attacked and Sullivan was killed, Marshall Security LLC officer Randall Deboer flagged down a BPD officer and said he had been assaulted by a homeless man in People’s Park. The city pays MSI to regularly patrol parks and trails in Bloomington. The security officer did not have his body camera on, according to the probable cause affidavit associated with the case.
After reviewing the video of the altercation the next day, BPD determined Deboer struck the man multiple times in the head with a baton after the man approached him and pointed his finger at him. The man then backed up into a “fighting stance” after Deboer drew his baton.
Deboer was charged with battery with a deadly weapon, a Level 5 felony.
Multiple times a day, Moss said, someone from MSI will come to Seminary Park and take pictures of everyone there. Moss said she thinks it’s to profile people for various crimes.
While reporters from the Indiana Daily Student were at Seminary Park interviewing Moss and another member of HOMA, a security officer from MSI arrived to take photos on his cell phone around the park. The guard was wearing a bodycam, which had no light on, and he declined to speak to the IDS.
Mark Holder, director of marketing and research at MSI, said in an email that the light being off meant the camera was not recording. He said body cameras must be “activated when interacting with the public or enforcing policies or laws”.
He wrote the photos were used “internally to track guard tour performance” and taken when conducting incident reports. He said the incidents included violations of park rules and abandoned or lost property.
“Within our contract with the City, we are held to certain performance standards, and the integration of photos into tours and reports helps us ensure compliance with those standards,” Holder wrote.
The City of Bloomington paid MSI $370,000 for security services. A contract between MSI and the city outlines MSI’s duties, requiring the company to provide unarmed security officers to patrol certain Bloomington parks and trails daily.
The contract specifies security officers should be unarmed. According to Giffen, Deboer’s use of a baton was against the city’s agreement.
“The September 27 incident at People’s Park was investigated, and the individual was terminated from employment,” Giffen said. “The security officer involved did not follow the City’s direction, expectations, and approved contractual procedures for engaging with the public.”
Holder also condemned Deboer’s actions.
“We too are intolerant to this conduct, and the blatant disobedience to our policies, which led to our action of termination,” Holder said in the email.
Oct. 11
Two weeks after Ballard was attacked on Kirkwood Avenue, he was there again, involved in another attack.
Initial reports said Ballard attacked a boy. Video evidence shows the altercation was primarily verbal with Ballard attempting to punch the boy. It isn’t clear if Ballard later hit the boy or not.
One witness can be heard in the video saying, “this is the second time, the same guy,” in reference to Ballard.
At Shalom on Oct. 30, Ballard behaved aggressively and was told to leave the premises. Workers at Shalom called the police, who arrived after Ballard left.
Moss said she thought the problems could be solved at its core by state-funded, affordable housing. In an email to the IDS, Giffen said the city has invested $9 million in affordable housing, eviction prevention and rapid rehousing since 2024.
He said the city is pursuing strategies including preserving existing housing, preventing eviction through assistance and rehousing programs and modernizing the permitting process to allow for new housing to be built quickly and affordably.
He also said the city was looking at increasing housing stock through projects like Hopewell, a new housing development at the former IU Health Hospital site.
The city is looking at a June 2026 construction start date for the project.
Bill Corbin used to live in affordable housing in Bloomington before it got sold. Now he sleeps on Bloomington’s streets or shelters when he can.
He hasn’t personally experienced violence during his time on Bloomington’s streets, but he’s seen the impact it’s had on his peers.
He said the problem with being homeless is “keeping your humanity” as people either ignore you or harass you. This, he said, can be seen whenever someone from the homeless community defends themselves in an attack or starts one.
“If you get treated like an animal long enough, you're going to start to behave like one,” Corbin said.
