INDIANAPOLIS POLICE ACCUSED OF ROBBING DRUG DEALERS

INVESTIGATION

A patrolman is charged with shooting a trafficker to death during a botched
ripoff.

INDIANAPOLISThe police Department,struggling to recover public trust after
four officers were charged in a drunken street brawl,was plunged into
turmoil again Thursday when the FBI announced an investigation into charges
that officers have been stealing from drug dealers.

"We have to rid ourselves of the problems we have in this department once
and for all," Police Chief Michael Zunk said. "We cannot continue to be
embarrassed by bad officers."

Patrolman Myron A. Powell, 35, a sevenyear veteran, is charged with
shooting a suspected drug dealer to death during an apparently botched
drugsandcash robbery this month. Convicted drug dealer Michael A.
Highbaugh, 33, who was also charged in the slaying, told police that he and
Powell had been robbing dealers for four years.

Powell's arrest last week prompted a rash of tips about other police
crimes. Zunk said he sought FBI help to prevent any suspicion his
department might try to hide misconduct.

"We are committed to following this trail wherever it leads," said Wayne
Alford, agent in charge of the FBI's Indianapolis office.

Zunk said he had no further evidence of police involvement in drug murders
and said other leads being investigated suggest no widespread corruption.

"We're not trying to indict the entire Police Department," he said.

Last year, the department was rocked by indictments against four officers
accused of drinking heavily at a baseball game, accosting passersby on a
downtown street with racial and sexual insults and beating two of them.

The police chief resigned, and Zunk was brought in to clean up the
department.

A jury failed to reach verdicts in the case in October. Prosecutors struck
deals that allowed one former officer to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and
dropped charges against two officers who agreed to counseling. Another
former officer faces a second trial on unrelated battery charges.

Authorities pleaded for community understanding amid the latest
announcement, which came one day after a Marion County sheriff's deputy was
convicted of fondling female inmates.

"Lately there have been a series of police officers who have forgotten that
they are part of something larger and nobler," prosecutor Scott Newman
said. "And I think the public response to that should not be to distrust or
to hate police officers generally."

Roderick Bohannan, president of the local chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the FBI's
involvement gives the investigation muchneeded credibility.

Tales of police robberies of drug dealers have circulated on the street for
years, he said.

"You hear it in the barbershop, you hear it in the bar," he said.

The police brass paid little attention because no one would believe the
victims, he said.