A second IMPD police officer has been found dead inside his home in the past month. Noblesville police found a 10-year IMPD veteran, Officer Robert McCauley, dead in his home yesterday evening. The Indianapolis Star says McCauley died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police discovered his body after receiving reports of a person inside the home threatening to harm himself.
Last month, IMPD officers found the body of veteran IMPD Officer Gregory Slaven in his home. His cause of death has not yet been determined. A month earlier, a 34-year old man living with Officer Slaven, Aaron Barnes, was found dead in the same home. His death was ruled an accidental death resulting from an overdose of chloroform ingested by Barnes.
Officer McCauley was one of several police officers named as defendants in a federal lawsuit Willie King filed, claiming police violated his First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights when he was arrested in 2011 after police told him to stop filming an arrest of his neighbor. Officer McCauley seized King's camera. King was charged with resisting law enforcement, disorderly conduct and public intoxicated, but he was later found not guilty of those charges at trial. The City later settled the lawsuit filed by King for $200,000 and agreed to implement a new policy that prohibited officers from interfering with private citizens recording their actions.
3 comments:
One has to ask what has happened to the IMPD Chaplain's Office. One year ago, they were staffed with 3 full-time chaplains and 8 part-time chaplains. Since two full-time chaplains with 25 years each have quit, Chief Hite has not replaced the full-timers but also allowed the number of part-timers to drop to 7. Further, Chief Hite has directed the chaplains to become more involved in the community as organizers/liasions. The question is, who is taking care of the officers? Not their supervisors who are playing kiss-up to Hite. The chaplains are too busy going to community meetings and roll-calls per Hite's orders.
IMPD is a department with 1,600 officers plus civilians. The morale is at the bottom of the barrel. Is it no wonder that two officers have killed themselves.
Further, Chief Hite has strongly encouraged new hires be based on race and not qualifications. If he wants IMPD to look like the community, that means all of Marion County and not just Center and Warren Townships. In the past IMPD chaplains were 73% white and 27% black. This roughly is equivalent to the community. Now the ratio is 50%-50%
Police Chaplains are to assist and counsel police, not to be liasons to the community. One must wonder if these officers could have gotten help under another Chief.
Must keep digging into the IMPD! Is there a BDSM and or Gay subculture among some members of the IMPD other than the one who killed himself recently?
I really don't care what IMPD officers do on their own time in the privacy of their own home. What I do care about is 2 officers took their own lives and the administration did nothing to prevent it.
Also as a taxpayer, I know it takes approx. $500,000 to get a new officer through the academy and on the job training, before that officer can function on his/her own. We just saw One Million Dollars fly out of the window with the death of these two officers. One would think that the IMPD brass would want to save the training dollars they claim they do not have.
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