A Beech Grove police officer was arrested and is on paid administrative leave after sheriff’s deputies were called to check on a possible drunken driver.
Jill C. Liter, 40, Indianapolis, was arrested on a charge of operating while intoxicated after she refused to take a blood-alcohol breath test. Police got a warrant for her blood to be drawn and tested, according to a report from the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.
Liter, a detective with the Beech Grove Police Department, was arrested at 10 p.m. Sunday after a gas station employee called police about what he believed was a drunken driver.
Liter has been put on paid leave during the investigation, Beech Grove Police Chief Mark Swartz said.
Any further action by the police department would happen after her court case is resolved, he said. Liter has been an employee of the police department since October 1997 and makes a salary of $63,908, Beech Grove Clerk-Treasurer Dan McMillan said.
The clerk told police Liter smelled like alcohol, had trouble standing at the register and using the card reader and struggled to walk a straight line. When deputies got to the gas station, on Smith Valley Road, just east of State Road 37, they found Liter in her vehicle with the car running and the driver’s side door open. Deputies also said Liter smelled like alcohol, according to the report.
Liter told police she’d had a few beers at a friend’s house and that she was a police officer. She refused to take sobriety tests and refused a breath test that would measure her blood-alcohol content.
Deputies said Liter’s attitude was abusive and that she had expected to be let go, rather than police further investigating, the report said.
When deputies tried to place Liter in handcuffs, she walked away twice and had to be restrained.
While the deputy took Liter to the Johnson County jail, she demanded to speak with her supervisor at the Beech Grove Police Department.
The deputy said she could not make a call, but he would ask his supervisor to contact hers.
At Johnson Memorial Hospital, where workers drew Liter’s blood for the blood-alcohol test, she was uncooperative, and deputies told her she could face further charges if she did not calm down, the report said.
Liter was released from the jail on $1,000 bond.
