2 Indianapolis officers indicted for shooting Black man who was sleeping in his car, prosecutor says

IL file photo

A grand jury has indicted two Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers for shooting a Black man who was sleeping in a car parked outside his grandmother’s house, a prosecutor said Friday.

Officers Carl Chandler and Alexander Gregory were indicted on battery and criminal recklessness charges in connection with the Dec. 31 predawn shooting of Anthony Maclin on the city’s north side, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said.

Maclin’s attorney, Stephen Wagner, said the officers fired at least 30 shots, hitting his client three times and leaving him hospitalized for 17 days for six surgeries.

Police had found Maclin asleep with a gun next to him in the driver’s seat before officers knocked on a car window and said, “Police. Hands up,” the police department said in a news release at the time.

“While Anthony had a firearm in the car — and a license to carry the firearm — he never reached for the gun,” Wagner said in a statement. “He never had the gun in his hand, and he certainly did not point the gun at officers. Anthony’s only ‘offense’ was being a young black man in a high crime neighborhood.”

Maclin and his family want Gregory and Chandler to be suspended without pay and fired by the police merit board, Wagner said.

The officers’ attorneys issued a statement Friday evening saying they were “extremely disappointed” in the prosecutor’s decision to seek criminal indictments.

“These officers acted in accordance with their training to defend their lives when a subject grabbed a gun and raised it toward them. Video, testimonial, and other evidence will establish the legality of their actions, ” attorneys John Kautzman and Edward Merchant said in the statement.

The police department said at the time that two investigations of the shooting were being conducted by the department, one by its Critical Incident Response Team and the second by its Internal Affairs division.