If you sold your car online and need to get it to a buyer you do not know, or you sold your old couch on the internet, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office has a safer place to make the swap.
The sheriff’s office has designated two parking spots in the office’s parking lot at 1091 Hospital Road, Franklin, to be used solely for people who want a safe place to meet up to exchange money or items, or even children for visitation time.
The spaces are two of the closest to the lobby of the sheriff’s office and are constantly video recorded, Johnson County Sheriff Doug Cox said.
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“I just think it is the right thing to do,” he said.
Nationwide, incidents of people getting seriously hurt when an internet sale or custody exchange has gone wrong helped prompt Cox to designate spaces at the sheriff’s office to make such transactions safer, he said.
“Really it is just to help people in that situation if they are close to Franklin and want to utilize it,” Cox said.
Sheriff’s deputies have not been responded to any such incidents to prompt the site, Cox said.
However, other departments in the county have. At least four reports of people injured or robbed when an internet sale has gone wrong have been made in the county and in Indianapolis in the last few years.
Earlier this month, a man was meeting a person at the Greenwood Park Mall parking lot to sell a gun when he was shot at and had his vehicle stolen. A man was robbed in the parking lot of a Franklin business in June 2016 when he met someone to sell his gun.
In Bargersville in 2015, a man was punched when he tried to sell his smart phone. In Indianapolis, police believe a man was shot three times in 2014 when he tried to meet a man at a vacant house to sell his iPhone.
Police at other departments in the county have encouraged buyers and sellers to meet at their parking lots to make internet sales because they are safer and some have cameras facing the lot.
The sheriff’s office would have someone to respond to any questions or incidents at the exchange site and jail staff would be available after hours to respond to any issues, Cox said.
Residents who have problems during an exchange can call 911 and have someone respond quickly during an emergency, or can go into the lobby for help, Cox said.
