Indy police officer arrested in shoplifting, resisting incident

An Indianapolis police officer has been arrested after taking items from a store and fighting with a Greenwood police officer who was trying to arrest her, police said.

Suzanne Marie Binder, 37, of Greenwood, was arrested on charges of theft and resisting law enforcement after the incident Thursday afternoon at the Meijer store on State Road 135, according to a Greenwood police report.

She has been suspended without pay from her job as a 14-year veteran of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, who is also conducting an investigation, according to the Indianapolis police department. The chief plans to recommend she be fired, according to a statement from the department.

Binder had about $55 worth of sleep aids and vitamins that had been taken from the store in her backpack, the police report said.

Greenwood police were called about 4:30 p.m. because a shoplifter was walking away from the store. An officer stopped the woman in a restaurant parking lot, but she wouldn’t stop walking, the report said. When the officer told her he would release his police dog, she said, “You can’t do that, it’s a misdemeanor,” the report said.

She repeatedly ignored the officer, the report said, and he had to use a maneuver to get her on the ground, where she continued to fight him, the report said. During the incident, she began telling the Greenwood officer that she was an Indianapolis police officer.

Meijer loss prevention employees said the items in her backpack had been taken from the store, where Binder was shopping with her parents. Her mother, too, had yelled at her daughter to stop walking away from the store, the report said.

Binder had complained of back pain during the incident, and she was taken to a hospital to be examined, and then taken to the Johnson County jail. She was held at the jail on $2,000 bond.