Project: Are police chases worth dying for?

As a cops beat reporter for the Star, I had written about numerous police chases that had ended in tragedy -- including the case of Marian W. Woempner, 78, who was driving to church with her husband, Robert, 82, when a Indianapolis Housing Agency police car, joining a chase as it was ending, sped through a red light at Emerson and Edgewood avenues and hit the Woempners' car, killing the woman.

Coworkers Eunice Trotter and I embarked on a project in which we pored through thousands of pages of police IA records to look at crash reports. Our two-day series published by The Indianapolis Star of 947 police pursuits in Indiana from 2003 and 2004 showed police were virtually unrestricted when they chase suspects. They pursue fleeing vehicles at high speeds and usually for traffic infractions, according to The Star's examination of reports from the Indianapolis Police Department, the Marion County Sheriff's Department and the Indiana State Police. At least 86 people -- bystanders, suspects and law enforcement officers -- died as the result of police pursuits in Indiana from 1993 through 2003, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Twenty-five of them were bystanders not involved in the chase. Nationally, 3,877 were killed during the same period, 1,251 of them not a part of the pursuit.

The series included a graphic about average speeds by police in pursuits, had PDFs of actual pursuit policies nationally.

We also looked at cities in the U.S. that abandoned police pursuits because of safety concerns.

I also discovered that due to maintenance problems, IPD had helicopters in the air (to assist with chases) far less often than they had projected when they beefed up that unit.

It was profiled in IRE's Extra Extra for May 2005. Neill Borowski, who edited the series, also wrote about it in the American Editor. AP in Indiana gave it first-place in the 2006 competition.

Chronicling a mini-marathon, 1st-person

I wrote a first-person account of the 2005 Indianapolis mini-marathon -- to see if I could cull a decent time while gathering a story or anecdote per mile for 13.1 miles. Here is the electronic snapshot of that effort, which I thought was pretty funny.



[With pals Jon Murray, Brendan O'Shaughnessy and Matt Tully, from the 2006 race.]

Bark, bark

I wrote a story about the dogs that went to 9-11. The lede went something like this: The search-and-rescue dogs of Indiana Task Force 1 do some impressive stuff -- they even fly for free. But it's their owners in need of a ride.

Breaking news: Pacers-Pistons Brawl

I turned from spectator into reporter while watching the Pacers-Detroit game the night of Nov. 20, 2004, when Indiana had a shot at an NBA title before a season-killing brawl at the Palace. On a cold, cold night, I took my wife to the scene and gathered information for a fan-reaction story for USA Today due to the national interest.

And I couldn't find the printout of my online-only work from that era, but I did shoot some video of a very bizarre incident -- an incident that will rank among the most bizarre of my career. Brawl-meister Ron Artest, after he'd been suspended, gave an interview to the Today show to explain his side of things.



He did it at the offices of Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications, where outside fans had gathered. And a radio station at the time had dressed one of its personalities as Piston Ben Wallace and put him in a dunk tank for Artest to try and sink. It's 16 seconds and truly strange.

2004 rampage left police officer dead

It was not yet 2 a.m. on Aug. 18, 2004 when the 911 calls started coming in from the Southside. First, Indianapolis police were dispatched to a home on Dietz Street where they found 66-year-old Alice Marie Anderson shot to death. Then callers said a man was stalking the neighborhood with a machine gun, firing indiscriminately. It was Alice Anderson's son Kenneth, who had history of mental problems and owned a lot of guns.

StarFiles: The shooting

As the squad cars began to arrive, he met them with a barrage of automatic weapons fire, shattering windshields. In the darkness, the officers saw muzzle flashes but couldn't tell how many weapons they faced because of the volume of gunfire.

Patrolman Tim Conley was shot in the stomach and leg as he slammed his car into reverse. In another cruiser, Officer Timothy "Jake" Laird was fatally wounded when a round hit him high in the chest just above his protective vest.

Anderson was moving through the neighborhood on foot. At the corner of Tindall Street and Gimber he spotted two more squad cars, took a position behind a jeep and began firing. One of the officers, Peter Koe, was a SWAT team member but had been working a regular shift, so his assault rifle was in the trunk of his cruiser. Already bleeding from the head from the flying glass, Koe managed to get to his gun and was loading it when he was shot in the leg. Koe took cover, then advanced on Anderson's position, both men firing. And both ran out of ammunition at about that point.

Koe was well-trained and knew he had a one-second opportunity. He rushed at Anderson, striking him with the empty rifle as the gunman tried to go for his pistol. Koe had a handgun also, and he was quicker. He fired and Anderson went down, dead, 16 minutes after it all began.

Help too late for driver in fatal crash

The frantic calls poured in to 911.

"Somebody's going to die if this woman doesn't get stopped!" one caller told a dispatcher.

While behind the wheel of her 1995 Lincoln sedan a week ago today, Dorothy Beasley, 73, had fallen ill shortly after entering I-465 from a Southside exit. Unable to take her foot off the gas pedal, and driving alone, she careened back and forth in her vehicle while traveling east.

Motorists took it upon themselves to create a rolling roadblock behind her. But despite at least a dozen calls to emergency dispatchers, starting just before 11:21 a.m., help arrived too late. Beasley's terrifying journey ended in a one-car crash at 11:29 a.m.

Here was the story.

Anthrax brings new bio-terror threat

Within days after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a new terrorist attack was launched through the U.S. mail. Letters laced with deadly anthrax were sent to media and government targets.

School shutdown: Fear of biohazard contamination enveloped hundreds of students after a powder residue was found beneath gym bleachers at St. Simon the Apostle School, 8155 Oaklandon Road. Firefighters eventually quarantined about 175 people inside the building until the substance was determined to pose no health hazard.