INDIANAPOLIS — The acting chief of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is defending his officers in the wake of Thursday’s deadly police shooting and blaming suspects who don't comply with orders.
IMPD officers have shot and killed 10 people in the last year in 19 separate police shootings.
The family of the man killed in the most recent officer-involved shooting wishes police could have found another way to arrest their loved one.
Forty-eight-year-old Raphael Dekemper spent more than 20 years in Indiana prisons for a murder committed in 1995 when he was just 17 years old. He got out on parole in 2017. His cousin, Tierra Johnson, said Dekemper told her he knew there was a warrant for his arrest but he was not going back to prison.
Police say they spotted Dekemper getting into the passenger seat of a car Jan. 25 shortly before 5:30 p.m. on the near east side in the area of Rural Street and Brookside Parkway North Drive. Police initiated a high risk traffic stop, keeping their distance from the suspect car, using their squad cars as barriers and ordering everyone out of the car pulled over. Police say Dekemper got out the car within seconds and fired shots at officers. Three officers fired their guns, killing Dekemper.
"I understand that they said that he shot first,” Johnson said. “But it was other ways around it. If you know he was armed, they could have went another direction. I just wish it could have ended better, and we're just going to miss him."
Police provided photos of a gun recovered next to Dekemper and bullet holes in a squad car.
"Our officers are doing exactly what we want them to do. They're being focused in their approach, and going after that small number of people that are responsible for the violence in our community,” acting IMPD Chief Chris Bailey said. “I think that's what our community wants us to do."
Dekemper was wanted on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, criminal recklessness shooting into a building, pointing a gun at someone and invasion of privacy. Those charges came from an incident Jan. 5 where he allegedly fired shots at a man outside a home on the eastside on North Bolton Avenue.
"We'll continue to look for ways that we as a police department can mitigate these types of encounters,” Bailey said. “We don't want that to happen. And so, we'll still look at things that we can control to lower the risk and mitigate these situations. But at the end of the day, our officers respond a lot of times to the actions of the people we have no control over."
The officers involved were identified as 9-year veteran Officers Michael Sojka, Nickolas Smith, and 8-year veteran Officer Andrew Hibschman.
IMPD says the department is waiting for a final proposal on an outside agency to review the increase in officer-involved shootings and will then work on a selection process for who will do the review.