Granny on the near northeast side of Indy wakes up to a strange car parked and idling in her driveway at four in the morning on New Year's Eve. She calls the po-po to report it.
The police show up and find a guy sleeping in the driver's seat with a Glock in his lap. The car has Florida plates, and they confirm with Granny that she doesn't have any kin in Florida who might be paying her a surprise visit.
Plan A was to snatch the car door open and grab the Glock off the sleeper's lap before waking him up and sorting out what was going on, but the doors on the car were locked. So the officers fell back to Plan B, which was to tap on the window and tell the guy to put his hands up.
It was at that point that things went rodeo and the situation wound up with all three officers shooting at the dude...who of course turned out to be the homeowner's grandson in a rental car.
"Detectives were able to confirm the man woke up and was moving around in the car prior to any shots being fired. The man looked toward the officers and moved his arm toward the officers, but IMPD said it is not clear if the gun was in his hand. And, detectives say there's no indication that the man fired any rounds.
IMPD officers provided medical aid to the man until medics arrived and took him to Methodist Hospital, where he's reported to be in stable condition. IMPD clarified that the man was not arrested, no officers or uninvolved citizens were injured during this incident and detectives say there's no ongoing threat to the community."
Hopefully they'll release body camera footage. In general, I'm a lot more sympathetic to an OIS in a situation like this when the gun is sitting right there in dude's lap rather than a vague "furtive movement" but this definitely warrants a pretty thorough investigation.
This is why I like keeping my gun someplace where it's not going to make everybody all panicky and jumpy.
Remember the two maxims of dealing with the police:
- Confused cops are arrest-y cops, and
- Scared cops are shoot-y cops.
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