GARY | As three more of his residents were sent to the morgue in August, Mayor Rudy Clay stood up before the rolling television cameras of Chicago broadcast media and declared, "Gary is not a violent city."

Homicide victims have been turning up this year at a rate of one every five days in the city, police statistics show. With 50 killings so far this year, the city of 99,000 people could be on pace to have about 75 murders this year -- the highest number in eight years, federal crime statistics show. The 50 homicides so far in 2007 already surpasses the 48 homicides in the city for all of last year.

Tyrone C. Henry, 52, became the city's 50th homicide victim Sept. 1 when he was shot in the head in his Glen Park home.

Meanwhile, Gary has continued to outdo the per capita murder rates of some much larger cities. In 2006, for example, Gary had 4.8 homicides for every 10,000 residents, a Times analysis of federal crime data shows. In that same year, Chicago had 1.6 homicides for every 10,000 residents.

Backing up the claim?

In subsequent interviews, Clay has defended his decision to proclaim his city's nonviolence during a news conference on a triple homicide.

"The perception of Gary being a violent city is absolutely not the reality," Clay said in an interview. "The DNA of Gary is not violence. ... We have God-fearing people in Gary. Gary people are not violent."

Reaction to that view among observers has been mixed. Some support Clay's efforts to promote a positive image, while others say Clay is out of touch with reality on the streets.

"Admit to reality. Don't sugar-coat or play public relations games. Face the problem and deal with it," Miller resident Bill Kosarch said. "As mayor, he wants to put it in as good a light as possible and play Pollyanna. He has a vested interest."

Former Mayor Scott King, whose years as mayor from 1996 to 2006 saw murder rates high and low, said he could understand why Clay would proclaim nonviolence the morning after a brutal slaying.

"The default (media) angle is going to be a negative one, so you walk in with a defensive posture," King said. "But you can't just have a chamber-of-commerce mentality. You have to be objective."

A deadly mix

King said Gary's high incidence of poverty and Indiana's loose gun-control laws always have been a deadly mix on Gary streets.

Lifelong Midtown resident Jeffrey Gissendanner has a different view. Gissendanner said Gary is no more violent than any other city in America and noted that many people from the suburbs commute to Gary for work.

He admitted Gary is part of the national trend of increasing violence, particularly in poverty-stricken areas. But that mentality represents a small minority in certain neighborhoods, not the whole city.

"Most of the people who have perceptions of Gary have never been to Gary. ... It's what they're told or what they read in the newspaper," Gissendanner said. "It gives everyone in the country this idea that to go into Gary, you have to put on your six-guns and 10-gallon hat. And that's just not the case."

A failing effort?

Lake County Prosecutor Bernie Carter, whose staff deals with the city's homicides on a day-to-day basis, said he interpreted Clay's comments as a good-faith attempt to boost city morale in the face of more negative news.

But he said Gary and Lake County's other urban areas still have major problems with drug trafficking. He does not believe all the federal, state and local law-enforcement programs exerted since the 1990s have led to a true decrease in drug trafficking in Gary.

King lamented that federal grants to the Gary Police Department dropped from $2 million in 1996 to $40,000 last year.

But Mark Becker, who leads the FBI's Gang Response Investigative Team which focuses mainly on Gary and East Chicago, said Gary's problem is one of perception.

"If people are afraid of something, it's easy to avoid it and call it a bad place," Becker said. "If Gary was really a bad city, we wouldn't get the phone calls that we get from residents who want to help clean up the city."