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A Marion County grand jury indicted two Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers for the shooting of Anthony Maclin, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears announced Friday.
Maclin was asleep in a rental car in his grandmother’s driveway when he was shot by officers last December.
Officers Carl Chandler and Alexander Gregory have been charged for their alleged roles in the shooting. Chandler and Gregory face felony charges of aggravated battery, battery with a deadly weapon, battery resulting in serious bodily injury, criminal recklessness and battery resulting in moderate bodily injury.
Mears said a grand jury allows for community members to decide for themselves if the force the officers used was reasonable.
“Those are the people who are your neighbor, your friends, your co-workers, who come in and ultimately get to make that determination as to what's reasonable or not under the circumstances,” Mears said.
Early in the morning on Dec. 31, 2022 Maclin’s grandmother Vicki Driver called 911 because a car she didn’t recognize was parked in her driveway. Officers arrived and found Maclin asleep in the car. Driver was unaware that her grandson was in the car, which he had rented.
Edited body-worn camera footage shows IMPD officers approached the car and identified a gun in Maclin’s lap, which is not immediately visible on camera. The officers then attempted to open the car’s doors and shone flashlights into the windows.
About three minutes after their arrival, officers began to knock on the windows to wake Maclin. The IMPD narrative in the edited body-worn camera footage then claims Maclin moved his arm toward the passenger seat, followed by about six seconds of steady gunfire from the officers.
Maclin was struck three times by gunfire and hospitalized for his injuries, which required multiple surgeries.
Earlier this year, Maclin filed a tort claim, which requested an undisclosed amount of money. It also demanded the release of the full unedited body camera footage and the officers to be fired and charged.
“Anthony’s only ‘offense’ was being a young black man in a high crime neighborhood,” said Stephen Wagner, an attorney representing Maclin, in a statement. “This ‘shoot first and ask questions later’ approach to policing is illegal and cannot be tolerated, which is why the family is grateful that the criminal process will proceed against Officers Gregory and Chandler.”
Maclin’s family is set to hold a press conference on Monday. Wagner’s statement adds that Maclin and his family are calling for IMPD Chief Randal Taylor to suspend Gregory and Chandler without pay and recommend their termination by the Indianapolis Civilian Police Merit Board.
At the time of publication, IMPD has not responded to a request for comment.
The criminal charges come several months after two other IMPD officers were indicted by a Marion County grand jury for their alleged roles in the death of Herman Whitfield III.
Whitfield’s mother called 911 on April 25, 2022, hoping an ambulance would come and help her son who was having a mental health crisis. Instead, six IMPD officers entered their home, tased Whitfield twice and placed him in the prone position for several minutes until he became unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly afterward.
Contact WFYI criminal justice reporter Katrina Pross at kpross@wfyi.org. Pross is a Corps Member of Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project.
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