There’s so much that’s still unclear about that afternoon, she said. But what is clear is that it started with what law enforcement officials refer to as a “high-risk traffic stop.”
Her son, Evan, summed it up in a tweet: “Starting my year off by getting pulled over by 8 cops, being hand cuffed, and being at ?gun point ... #FreeLutes.”
Evan was on his way to basketball practice at Bloomington High School South on New Year’s Day. It was after an “abrupt” turn into a neighborhood when Sgt. Chad Lierschran the plate number, 726HAL, on the black 2005 Buick Rainier, ?according to the deputy report.
The return on the number indicated that the vehicle was reported stolen out of Gary. As Liersch followed the vehicle, arriving in the high school parking lot, dispatch informed him that they, too, believed the vehicle was stolen when the plate information was fed to a police database.
“He was under the impression this driver was trying to evade him,” Monroe County Sheriff Brad Swain said.
Due to the apparent nature of the stop, with Liersch believing the vehicle was stolen, he requested backup and proceeded to carry out a high-risk traffic stop, according to the report.
A high-risk traffic stop, also known as a felony traffic stop, is when the responding officer has concern that the driver or occupants of the vehicle have committed a serious crime. A simple Internet search on a high-risk traffic stop bears images of scenarios depicting drivers with their hands in the air, some even on their knees or lying face down, and police with weapons at the ready.
Moments later, another officer arrived on the scene, according to the report. And then eventually seven more. In a high-risk traffic stop, it’s protocol that each officer has his or her gun drawn, Swain said.
Evan Lutes was asked to remove the keys from the ignition, place them on the roof of the car and show his hands through the window.
The deputies realized their mistake as the 16-year-old stood in handcuffs — the vehicle had not been stolen, and here stood a high school sophomore in handcuffs and at gunpoint.
As far as the manner in which the high-risk stop was carried out, Swain said he took no issue, referring to the protocol as being executed “flawlessly” and that Evan was cooperative from the beginning. Evan’s mother, Tracee, was also called to the scene.
“There was a tremendous amount of upset, as any parent would be, with what took place,” Swain said. “I talked with them and said what I’m going to do from a training standpoint and policy standpoint. We are using this event as a teaching method (and) moving up our schedule of training for handling high-risk stops.”
It came down to an apparent miscommunication regarding the plate number ?in question.
Josh Gillespie, deputy commissioner for communications at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, said that, from what BMV officials can tell, the same license plate number belonged to a 1992 red Buick LeSabre. The stolen vehicle was last registered with the BMV in 2010, its registration having expired in 2011. After the registration expired and the new plate cycle went into effect in 2013, the plate number went back into circulation.
Gillespie said that when the plate number was run through the Indiana Data and Communications System, a database used by law enforcement, the following indicator would have appeared:
“Warning - The following vehicle record contains expired license plate data.”
The issue has become a blame game of sorts, and Gillespie said the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office is attempting to hold the BMV responsible for what happened. But Swain said that’s not the case, acknowledging that the deputies and dispatch overlooked the fact that the registration on the stolen vehicle expired in 2011 and, although it was also a Buick, was a different model entirely. The vehicle identification numbers were not ?the same.
“We make adjustments, we learn from it,” Swain said. “We address the issue (instead of) coming up with excuses and assigning blame. I want to find solutions (to this problem) to reduce the chance of it happening again.”
When Tracee talks about what happened to her son in the parking lot, she speaks carefully and almost hesitantly. This is to avoid casting unnecessary blame, Lutes said, or rousing any conflict. By Thursday afternoon, she was still speaking with Swain to learn more about the incident.
“I will say this,” Lutes said. “It’s something no family should have to go through.”
