INDIANAPOLIS — When it comes to nighttime security measures, police often say to lock your doors and turn on your lights.
But people living at an apartment complex near 38th Street and Sherman Drive in Indianapolis cannot do either of those things because some lights and locks don't work.
For years, residents have been contending with an issue they want management to solve. They say when the sun goes down, the lights go out.
"We don't wanna have to be afraid to be outside at nighttime," Evelyn Gose said. "When I moved in here 12 years ago, there were lights at the end of the street."
Gose said she has been robbed three or four times. RTV6 interviewed her the last time it happened in 2016.
"As I went to unlock my door, he reached over to grab my purse," she said. "Took off with it."
Almost three years have passed and all the while, the lights have been out in the apartment parking lot.
"There was always one excuse after another as to why they couldn't fix the lights on the building," Gose said.
And to top it all off, the doors to her building and many others don't lock.
"It's not been a locked door for, I'm gonna say, five years," Gose said. "Anybody can walk in."
The lack of lighting has changed the things Gose is comfortable doing.
"I don't go to church at nighttime anymore," she said.
Lighting would make a difference, but at night all folks living here have to shine the way is the lighted cross from a church across the street.
"The song, 'The Way the Cross Leads Home,' it was like that," Gose said.
It's a literal beacon guiding the way home for residents, and a beacon of hope that management will finally get something done to add lighting of its own.
"Be thoughtful of us. We pay our rent," Gose said. "We want to feel secure. We want our families to feel secure and safe."
