Law and Government
| Mayor | Tom Henry |
| At-Large | Marty Bender |
| At-Large | John Crawford |
| At-Large | John Shoaff |
| First District | Tom Smith |
| Second District | Russ Jehl |
| Third District | Thomas F. Didier |
| Fourth District | Mitch Harper |
| Fifth District | Geoff Paddock |
| Sixth District | Glynn A. Hines |
Fort Wayne has a mayor-council government. Common Council has nine elected members, one representative from each of the city's six council districts and three at-large members, serving four-year terms. The district members represent the constituents living within the boundaries of their jurisdiction, while the at-large members represent the citizens as a whole.
Democrat Tom Henry has been Fort Wayne's mayor since 2008. Elizabeth Malloy was appointed to the position of Deputy Mayor in 2010. Sandra Kennedy has held the city clerk position since 1983.
Under the Unigov provision of Indiana Law, City-County consolidation would have been automatic when Fort Wayne's population exceeded 250,000 and became a first class city in Indiana. Fort Wayne nearly met the state requirements for first class city designation on January 1, 2006 when 12.8 square miles (33 km2) of neighboring Aboite Township (and a small section of Wayne Township) including 25,094 people were annexed. However, a 2004 legislative change raised the population requirements from 250,000 to 600,000, which ensured Indianapolis' status as the only first class city in Indiana.
Municipal and State laws are enforced by the Fort Wayne Police Department, an organization of 460 officers. In 2006, Fort Wayne's crime rate was 5104.1 per 100,000 people, slightly above the national average of 4479.3. There were 18 murders, 404 robberies, and 2,128 burglaries in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Famous quotes containing the words law and/or government:
“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)