Investigators wanted by the IMPD to look at shootings involving cops

Indianapolis, Indiana – While IMPD detectives are still investigating this past Friday’s most recent officer-involved shooting, police brass are looking for a research firm to conduct an analysis of why it appears that there are so many incidences happening.

Eight people have died as a consequence of 15 officer-involved shooting events at IMPD since January 1.

Since August 1, there have been eleven similar instances.

“Everybody wants an answer why these are occurring in such close proximity,” said IMPD Assistant Chief Chris Bailey late in October after an officer killed a man who had shot him with his own service weapon. “We don’t have that answer other than our officers are responding a lot of times to the actions of other individuals and most of the times these individuals have been armed with a handgun.”

In 11 cases this year, there was a gun-wielding individual.

The subjects in two of the encounters were unarmed, and one of the incidents resulted in a deadly police shooting.

Since 2015, when police shot 20 people and 10 of them died, the IMPD has not seen a year as lethal as this one involving shooting occurrences involving officers.

The department has made contact with the Police Executive Research Forum in order to offer to carry out the investigation.

An unbiased researcher at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center stated that while analyzing shootings involving officers, a number of factors need to be taken into consideration.

“One would be officer characteristics,” said Senior Fellow Bruce Taylor. “What we want to know is the basics about the officer, what are the demographic characteristics, that would include things like gender and race and ethnicity, age, we would want to know the rank of the officers, years of service. We would also want to know the characteristics of the subjects. Subject characteristics would also include whether the subject was under the influence of drugs, did the subject had a weapon, did they use force themselves.”

Several IMPD officer-involved shooting occurrences this year included unlawfully armed convicted felons or those wanted by police who indicated earlier that they would not surrender without a struggle.

”The other type of measures that we would recommend would be situational characteristics,” said Taylor. “We want to know, what was the reason for the encounter, was this a stop that the police made for speeding or something like that, what kind of offense may have been committed, was the offense committed during an assault, were there witnesses present, what was the location, was this in an urban location, was it in a public place, private place, was there any camera footage of the event, how many officers were involved, backup requested?”

According to Taylor, variations in state law might also have an impact on how frequently situations involving shootings by officers occur.

”If there are new laws that have been introduced then you would want to account for that in the analysis,” said Taylor.

Following the July 1, 2022, repeal of Indiana’s firearms permit requirement, the IMPD has been involved in 16 shooting incidents involving armed individuals.

Taylor stated that after the study is over, IMPD may use the results to review training and policies.

It’s likely that IMPD won’t choose its researcher until 2024.