Indiana’s motto is “Crossroads of America,” and Indianapolis is where those roads cross. Five interstates, six major highways and 15 state routes crisscross the urban landscape to and from other midwestern cities. Yet, despite all that traffic crisscrossing the big city, to some, Indiana still feels comparatively slow. “Indiana is much, much, much slower than California, and I love it,” is how California native and Indiana Pacers great Reggie Miller once put it. Reggie clearly wasn’t an Indianapolis cop.

A bit of history. Since 1970, when Marion County and the City of Indianapolis merged, my city’s official name has been the Consolidated City of Indianapolis and Marion County, which is why simpletons like myself call it Indy. Indy is, in many ways, a wonderful place; famous for basketball at every level, amateur sports, festivals, a very cool children’s museum, a constant calendaring of conventions and, of course, the Indy 500, ironically located in the town of Speedway. What became the 500 started as a hot air balloon race across the infield of a car test track. Then it was motorcycles. Finally, the 500-mile auto race of today, albeit a bit slower than today’s 230 mph and with fewer concerts, fairways, American flags, Yeti coolers, couch fires and deaths (the average is one each year). There was probably collectively more clothing on the estimated 85,000 attendees of 1911 than the 325,000 of today, too.

In this climate, the frontline officer’s calm, respectful, by-the-book contact is the cooling system that keeps trust alive.

Marion County, where Indianapolis is located, houses close to 30 police departments, when including regulatory, transportation and university agencies. But the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, my department, is far and away the largest and busiest in both the county and state. To put the department’s size in perspective, at least from a geographic tilt, it covers most of the county and is divided into six districts, one of which alone covers 74 square miles. That’s nothing for, say, an Alaska state trooper, but in a city of nearly a million and with a police force down by nearly a quarter of its allotted officers, that’s a lot of area and people for not a lot of officers to cover. So it’s helpful when officers live and work in the same district. Their constant presence helps Andy Griffith it up a bit by deterring crime and shrinking the bigness of the city in a sense. Or at least that’s the fib I used to tell myself. I soon realized the distinct difference between naivety and reality.

One night, I was sound asleep when my wife, Dana, woke me up saying, “Case, someone’s shooting outside.” “Sure they are. Go back to sleep. I don’t hear anything.” “You slept through it. There were a bunch of shots, like from an automatic.” “OK,” I mumble, mostly back asleep by that point. The next morning, she wakes me up saying, “There are like 30 posts about the
shooting.” “What shooting?” I ask. “You’ve gotta get more specific than that in this city.” “The one from last night.” “….” “Outside … our house …” “Ooohhhhh. Yeaaaahh,” I reply. “I forgot you said that last night. So I guess someone was shooting, huh?” “Yes. Like I said.” “Nobody likes a told-you-so-er,” I say. “Well, I told you so.” 

I looked it up on my work computer. Eight calls, all describing hearing a car or two speeding away, plus anywhere from eight to 25 shots. Run closed out unfounded. “Unfounded?!” I blurt out. “Seems pretty founded to me, given all the calls.” “Well, go outside and look around for shells then,” Dana says. “I think I will.”

I needed to run my dog, Wiley, before my shift anyway, so we just went on a little evidence-hunting jog around the block. He’s no ballistics canine, but Wiley finds the first shell, followed by another, followed by another. We ultimately found a ridiculous amount of shell casings and a bunch of car parts scattered across the road and a yard, now missing half its fence. I’ve got no phone on me, so I run back home and radio in for day shift to cover the scene. As I gear up for work, I tell Dana my hypothesis. “What I’m guessing happened was two dudes got into a bar fight, turned road rage, turned shooting. That’s what responsible adults do. Dana, you’ve got to stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.” “Wow. That’s definitely what I’d do,” she replies. I’ll make a smartass out of her yet. Geared up and clocked in, I relieved one of the day shift officers. After about an hour of evidence collection, during which the evidence tech twice ran out of yellow numerical markers, the rifle shell casing collection count reached 80. Not exactly comforting, given I could have chipped a golf ball into my backyard from there, and I’m a terrible golfer.

Still, less unsettling than a 9 a.m. shooting in the alleyway three houses down from mine as I’m leaving home in my marked police car with my kid and dog loaded up in the back. Don’t ya just hate when that happens? I thought I’d just heard a tire blowout until a burgundy SUV came to a screeching halt in front of my car, driver and passenger screaming wildly. “He’s shooting at us! He’s shooting at us!” “Well that explains that blowout sound,” I think to myself. 

Shot-at victims screaming, nervous neighbors freaking out, and me pissed at the proximity of the stupidity to my critters and house, I radio for more cars, emphasizing that I’m basically tethered to my car given the kid. It’s hard to do much policing with a (surprisingly calm) baby on board. I pull my duty pistol from a bag sitting next to a bottle of breast milk, now fully recognizing and appreciating the department mandate to bring my gun and radio along in the cruiser even when off duty. “Control, victim says shooter is one of two Black males armed with a rifle. One’s wearing all black, the other a white hoodie. Either in the bus, in the alley or the Airbnb next to it.” 

Officers now on scene, I relay what little I know and ask, “You guys good? I’ve got a kid and a dog to take care of,” as I leave for their respective daycares.

I get to the babysitter’s place and tell her the story. She one-ups me, though I think this is one of those situations where one-upping is more of a loss. “Crazy, she says. What’s wrong with people?” “Lots, but it keeps me in business,” I reply. “You won’t believe this. …” she starts. “Oh, I’m sure I will.” “Well, on Easter Day, as my boyfriend’s son is playing in the front yard, all of a sudden, we just hear him screaming and screaming at the top of his lungs.” “What happened?” “Broad daylight, and some guy drove up, pointed a gun at him, and made him pull down his pants.” “What’s wrong with people?” I ask her back, actually a bit surprised.

Hours later, during my actual shift, I’m leading the front arrest team of what’s devolved into a barricaded suspect inside my neighboring Airbnb. SWAT shows up and takes over, bearcats, chainsaws, flash-bangs, gas grenades and all. They cut a hole in a wall, as the suspect had done the same trying to hide, toss in a buttload of gas, and out the silly billy comes. Needless to say, Zillow became a popular internet search on my computer. Silver lining, the situation gave me great motivation for a strong, frustration-fueled workout later that day.

That’s unsettling, but it’s perhaps still not as unsettling as the triple homicide that took place just down the road. I, again, slept through that whole thing. A late-shifter who took over for me most definitely did not. He wasn’t two storefronts from the shooters when shots rang out, sending a stampede of drunks his way. As he’s pulling drunk girls back to cover, he moves up, gun drawn, scanning everyone running toward him in a street crowd of hundreds. As he looks for the shooters, he steps over one, two, three bodies, lifeless, brains exposed, blood trickling down the sidewalk cracks. He’d had a conversation with one of those faces not two minutes earlier. It was about violence deterrence. A fourth person was shot but lived. That officer described the scene as a “real-life house of horrors.” Not exactly incentivizing for raising a daughter down the street.

But so many people do, and happily at that. Contradiction is the perfect word for life in Indy. Slow, beautiful, fun, Mayberry-like place to stay. Fast, ugly, crime-ridden, battlefield-like spot to avoid. Time and place dependent, both are true. For better or worse, I was largely blind to the reality of this contradiction in the Crossroads until working as a cop. No matter where you police, I’m sure you can relate. It’s like living somewhere between Mayberry and a military engagement.