By Tom Spalding and John Fritze, Indianapolis Star
An Indianapolis Housing Agency police sergeant was placed on administrative duty Monday, one day after his cruiser smashed into a Buick and killed a Far-Southside woman.
Investigators are looking into whether Sgt. Clayton Clark followed proper procedure while apparently rushing to the spot where an Indianapolis Police Department car chase had ended.
At least three witnesses told police that Clark’s cruiser was “traveling extremely fast and did not slow down when crossing the intersection” of Emerson and Edgewood avenues. Agency policy requires officers to slow down or stop to make sure an intersection is clear.
Clark T-boned the Buick, killing its driver, 78-year-old Marian Woempner. Her husband, Robert, 82, was critically injured and underwent surgery for a heart injury Monday afternoon.
“Our hearts go out to the victims of this crash,” said Indianapolis Public Safety Director Robert Turner. “We will be looking at every aspect of this incident to determine exactly what happened and to see if all applicable laws and policies were followed.”
Officers who specialize in accident reconstruction are examining evidence -- from skid marks to crash debris -- to determine how fast Clark’s cruiser traveled and whether he had done enough to avoid other motorists.
Clark was not involved in the chase, police officials said. He was about a mile from the IPD officer who had been pursuing a fleeing truck, said IPD Lt. Brian Clouse. The department is overseeing the crash investigation.
But the chase remained a key factor in the eyes of friends of the Woempners, who questioned whether police needed to launch the pursuit.
“An innocent person died just because they felt like they had to get him, and that’s not right. It’s not right,” said Vickie Grimes, 56, a friend of the couple’s for decades. “I want people taken to justice as well as anyone else but not at the loss of wonderful people like that.”
Woempner became the ninth bystander to die in the last seven years in connection with a police pursuit. The city revamped its pursuit policies in 2002 after the deaths of a 27-year-old woman and her 9-year-old son in a chase-related crash.
Mayor Bart Peterson said Monday he does not plan another review of the city’s policy because he believes this was not a pursuit situation.
“It was an emergency run. There was a pursuit,” Peterson said. “But the accident didn’t come out of the pursuit.”
Democrats and Republicans alike on the City-County Council agree that one death -- although tragic -- doesn’t by itself warrant a change in policy.
First, investigators need to determine what happened and if current policies were followed, said Republican City-County Councilman Scott Schneider. Then he said city leaders could talk about the need for change.
“Anytime somebody dies, it’s probably a good idea to go back and investigate what worked and what didn’t,” he said. “If there’s a mistake in policy that’s costing more lives than it’s protecting, then it’s probably something that needs to be looked at.”
No one keeps track of how many police departments nationwide have changed the way officers chase suspects. But more departments are tightening controls, and “the trend is to limit pursuits to violent felonies,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina.
Most police departments in Massachusetts follow that rule, which means they can’t chase car thieves, carjackers and many other offenders unless someone’s life is in danger.
“When I started, it was, ‘If he’s a bad guy, go get him,’ ” said Jim Machado, a 30-year police veteran who has a top role in the Massachusetts Police Association. “The fact that more innocent people were getting injured in pursuits” caused changes during the past 15 years.
Under a year-old Chicago police policy, officers must base their decisions to chase a suspect on a range of factors, including the severity of the crime, weather conditions and traffic congestion. Their decisions also can be vetoed by a supervisor.
Changes across the country have sparked a dramatic decline in the number of police chase-related deaths, but Alpert says the percentages are the same across the board: About 40 percent of police chases end in crashes, 20 percent of them end with injuries, and people die in 1 percent of them.
Sunday’s wreck involved one of the housing police department’s best officers. Clark, 48, has won the agency’s medal of valor twice in his four years with IHPD and has no reprimands.
He is a graduate of the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield. Besides the usual classroom education, IHPD Assistant Chief Stephen Golden said Clark received eight hours of training on the emergency vehicles and operations course.
Just before Sunday’s 3:39 p.m. crash, IPD had pursued a pickup fleeing a hit-and-run accident.
The chase ended when the pickup struck a utility pole at Emerson and Southport Road. Officers arrested Dewayne Wilson, 25, of the 2700 block of South Illinois Street. He faces preliminary charges of criminal recklessness, leaving the scene of an accident, fleeing police, driving on a suspended license and two counts of criminal confinement.
Wilson has an initial hearing at 9 a.m. Thursday.