INDIANAPOLIS — A second Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer has been suspended with a recommendation for termination to the Merit Board over misuse of automated license plate reader technology, IMPD said Friday.

This is the second time in two months an IMPD officer has received a termination recommendation over misuse of license plate readers. The first officer was caught using Flock cameras for personal reasons and was immediately stripped of police powers after what IMPD Chief Tanya Terry called “intentional misconduct.”

Neither officer has been named.

Friday, IMPD said another officer had been placed on administrative leave and stripped of police powers after the misconduct last month prompted an investigation into other irregular uses of the automated license plate readers.

Based on additional facts gathered, Terry recommended that officer be terminated.

“Using law enforcement technology or accessing confidential information for anything other than a legitimate public safety purpose is a serious violation of the trust our community places in us,” Terry said. “When an officer breaches that trust, we will investigation thoroughly, take action and hold them accountable.”

IMPD said it issued an updated standard operating procedure for automated license plate readers last month that every officer was required to sign to keep access to the technology. The procedure states that each search must now be tied to a case or incident number as well as a national incident-based reporting system offense code. The department began using stronger auditing procedures to identify and investigate potential misuses more quickly.

The department said in a press release Friday that it will support legislation that guides proper use of automated license plate readers while leveraging it as a law enforcement tool.

The Indianapolis-based Girl Scouts of Central Indiana canceled horse programming for the remainder of the season this week at Camp Gallahue in rural Morgantown after a horse died from an illness.

Concerned citizens contacted news outlets after photos circulated online showing a dead horse and other horses that appeared to be in poor condition at the camp in Brown County. The camp’s website states that scouts can ride horses at the barn and includes a request for supplies for the animals.

Circle City Broadcasting obtained photos of horses at the camp from a source who asked to remain anonymous.

Lauren Palmer, director of communications for Girl Scouts of Central Indiana, said in an email, “We were saddened by the passing of a horse at Camp Gallahue due to an unexpected illness.”

Palmer said the Girl Scouts worked with the horses’ owner to ensure the remaining animals received veterinary care as soon as the organization learned about the situation. A local provider owns the horses and leases them to the camp.

“As a precaution, all horse programming for the remainder of the season has been cancelled while we assess next steps,” Palmer said in the email.

The Indiana State Board of Animal Health plans to investigate the matter after receiving a complaint, according to agency spokesperson Denise Derrer.

The Brown County Sheriff’s Department and Brown County Animal Control have not returned calls for comment.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The owner of 20 Past 4 and more, a smoke shop with locations in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, is facing multiple charges after investigators say he sold marijuana packaged to look like legal hemp products.

Jonathan T.B. Miller, 55, of Fort Wayne, was charged with two counts of dealing in marijuana, corrupt business influence, money laundering, dealing in paraphernalia, and unlawful distribution of flavored nitrous oxide.

Miller owns five 20 Past 4 and more stores, two in Indianapolis and three in Fort Wayne.

His stores are at the following locations:

• 3500 N. Clinton St., Fort Wayne
• 2014 Broadway, Fort Wayne
• 5948 W. Jefferson Blvd, Fort Wayne
• 3433 Madison Ave., Indianapolis
• 2415 E. 56th St., Indianapolis

According to probable cause affidavit filed in Allen County, Indiana State Excise Police opened an investigation in Jan. 2026. After receiving tips that the stores were selling marijuana, undercover officers were sent in to make controlled purchases.

At the Clinton St. store, an officer bought a product called “Tea House Compton Candy,” labeled at 26.61% THC. It later tested at 7.611% Delta-9 THC — more than 25 times Indiana’s legal limit of 0.3%. The lab documents attached to the product were missing a batch number and expiration date, both required under Indiana law, documents revealed.

On Feb. 21, Excise Police raided the Indianapolis store at 2415 E. 56th St. Every plant material seized tested over the legal limit, and the store received a notice of violation for possession of marijuana, dealing marijuana, and dealing smokeable hemp. Miller later told investigators he began pulling plant material from his stores after that raid.

Undercover purchases continued into April, documents show. Products purchased continued to test far over the legal limit of THC.

On June 22, officers executed search warrants at all three Fort Wayne stores and two warehouses. Miller was found at the warehouse on Virginia Avenue working with mason jars of yellow wax.

According to the affidavit, Miller told police the wax contained THC during a mirandized interview. He admitted he sources flower and wax from California, breaks it into smaller packages and sells it in his stores. Lab documents, he said, comes from his suppliers.

Additionally, through a seized cell phone, police found evidence that Miller knew his products were illegal, including his attempts to use falsified lab documents as cover, according to the affidavit.

In a store documents, labeled as “Weekly Team Focus,” police found a section under “Up-sale focus” that listed flower and dab bar. The affidavit indicates, one of the store managers told police they knew they couldn’t sell this plant material.

“We know we’re dancing in the gray area,” Miller told police. “With all the competition, just trying to be the best, I guess.”

More than 20 pounds of wax concentrate and 62 pounds of plant material were seized across all locations. Several pallets full of flavored nitrous oxide that were found, which is illegal in Indiana, were also mentioned in court documents.

Business records show at least $120,014.71 in profit from illegal THC sales between January 2025 and June 2026.

Miller is being held on $100,000 surety bond. His initial hearing is Sept. 18.

INDIANAPOLIS— An eastside man is concerned about a fire hydrant that’s been leaking for several weeks in his neighborhood.

Kyle Drew contacted Indiana’s I-Team for help.

“We just need an answer,” said Drew.

Drew lives in Blackburn Terrace, an apartment complex on the east side of Indianapolis.

The fire hydrant on his street is leaking water into the grass, onto the sidewalk, and into the street.

He’s worried about the mess, wasted water, and if firefighters can even use the hydrant.

“If it’s leaking this much, they might not even be able to get water out at this point,” said Drew.

He’s also concerned about the water making potholes worse or disguising them.

Indiana’s I-Team’s cameras were rolling as a car hit one of the potholes covered with water.

“Large trucks, larger cars, you can hear their shocks jumping,” said Drew. “It’s really loud and it’s dangerous because it’s going to end up getting somebody hurt out here.”

Drew said he contacted property management and Citizens Energy but the problem remained, so he contacted Indiana’s I-Team.

Indiana’s I-Team contacted Citizens Energy because they own and maintain 42,000 hydrants across Central Indiana.

But a Citizens Energy spokesperson told us the hydrant is not their responsibility because the hydrant is private.

The hydrant is the responsibility of property management at Blackburn Terrace, Indiana’s I-Team has learned.

Blackburn Terrace is managed by SHP Management Corp.

When Indiana’s I-Team stopped by the Blackburn Terrace office, it was closed.

So, Kara Kenney with Indiana’s I-Team called the corporate office and an employee told Kenney they’re working on hiring a plumber to get the leak fixed.

“We have contacted two plumbers or vendors to assess the situation and give us a bid of whether it can be repaired or if it can actually be replaced,”  the employee told us on September 9.  “It’s not being not addressed. We are just waiting on the final information so that we can proceed.”

Two days later, Kyle Drew sent us a picture of someone inspecting the hydrant.

But when Indiana’s I-team stopped by on September 17, the hydrant was wrapped up but is still leaking.

“We can’t keep like this,” said Drew. “Everybody pays their bills.”

If you have a leaking hydrant in your neighborhood, contact your water utility and if you’re a renter — also contact your property manager.

WHITESTOWN, Ind. — A large fire Thursday night sent flames and smoke high into the night sky from an apartment building under construction in Whitestown.

Whitestown Fire Chief Josh Westrich said the fire was north of the Meadows on Main apartments complex that’s north of the intersection of Main Street and Albert S. White Drive. It was not immediately known if anyone was hurt.

Whitestown resident Mason Asher said he heard a loud lightning strike about 10:30 p.m. Thursday and about 15 minutes later saw an orange glow around homes in the Walker Farms subdivision. Asher said he walked to the fire scene and spoke with women who had called in the fire. They told him they saw a lightning strike in the area and then noticed a fire while driving by.

Because the building is still under construction, it does not have electrical wiring yet, Asher said.

The Boone County Sheriff’s Office said South Main Street between Seabiscuit Road and Albert S. White Drive was closed while emergency crews worked.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A McCordsville business owner faces prison time after admitting to stealing more than $600,000 through a fraudulent pandemic relief scheme.

Sandra Pierce, 42, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud on Monday in connection with a yearslong effort to defraud the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), federal prosecutors announced in Indianapolis.

Pierce owned a business called Sandy’s on the Run. Federal prosecutors said Pierce claimed to help individuals and businesses get COVID-19 relief loans. Instead, Pierce carried out a wire fraud scheme by drafting and submitting 22 fraudulent loan applications under the names of other people.

In exchange for the fake applications, Pierce took more than $100,000 in fees from her clients. She also submitted applications in her own name and received $48,191 from the government. The total loss to taxpayers was approximately $632,905.

The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General investigated the case. Pierce faces up to 20 years in federal prison for each count. A U.S. District Court judge will set a sentencing date later.

The case is part of a nationwide surge called Operation No Doze. From June 12 to Sept. 1, federal prosecutors across the country charged more than 160 defendants in cases involving roughly $245 million in intended losses.

“Exploiting a national crisis for personal gain goes against every fiber of Hoosier decency,” U.S. Attorney Tom Wheeler said. “Programs like the Paycheck Protection Program were created to help honest small business owners survive an unprecedented hardship, not to serve as an opportunity for fraud. Our office will continue working with our federal partners to identify those who took advantage of this moment of need, hold them accountable, and protect relief programs meant to support Hoosiers when they need it most.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche said the relief was meant to keep small businesses alive during government lockdowns.

“The defendants charged during our summer surge allegedly fabricated businesses, submitted false payroll and revenue claims, stole identities, and concealed foreign ties on their applications— but they will now be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Blanche said.

Assistant Attorney General Colin M. McDonald of the National Fraud Enforcement Division said the surge shows what is possible when public servants work together.

“Our mission is clear: protect taxpayer funds, safeguard the integrity of federal relief programs, and deliver justice to those who exploited them,” McDonald said.

Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler said the agency has suspended 870,000 borrowers tied to $39 billion in suspected fraudulent activity.

“In partnership with Vice President J.D. Vance and the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, we’re putting fraudsters on notice: the federal government will no longer turn a blind eye to those who stole from taxpayers,” Loeffler said.

SBA Inspector General William Kirk said the focused approach helps investigators identify fraud and recover funds.

The Department of Justice created the National Fraud Enforcement Division in April to investigate those who commit fraud against the public. The effort supports a task force chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance to eliminate waste and abuse in federal benefit programs.

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana drivers have faced a sharp increase at the fuel pump after Gov. Mike Braun extended a state gas tax holiday to help residents manage rising costs.

The average price for a gallon of regular gas in Indiana hit $3.92 Thursday, according to AAA. That is a 17-cent increase from Wednesday.

“We are in an affordability crisis. And this affordability crisis affects more and more and more of the economy,” said Andreas Hauskrecht, a clinical professor of business economics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. “And you will feel it more and more and you will feel it in groceries and you’ll feel it in the supermarket.”

Braun originally issued the gas tax holiday in April to alleviate prices. He has now extended the holiday through Oct. 5. Diesel prices, which averaged $6.42 a gallon Thursday in Indiana, are not included in the tax relief.

“Diesel is normally used by businesses. So, businesses versus households. That was a reason it wasn’t included,” Braun said.

Hauskrecht said the spike in diesel prices hits farmers particularly hard during the harvest.

“A tractor runs on diesel,” Hauskrecht said. “Farmers are really hit by those high diesel prices because they have to bring the crops in now. They have to bring it in otherwise they go bad.”

Because most goods are transported by truck, the economist noted that rising fuel costs will eventually reach almost every consumer product.

“Think about trucking. The trucks are using diesel. We truck most of the goods. And so it affects basically every final good,” Hauskrecht said.

He added that there is little the average household can do to avoid the impact.

“For a normal household, there is nothing you can avoid. I mean, you can try saving, but Americans have very low saving rate. And the low and middle class American have an extremely low saving rate,” Hauskrecht said.

NEW YORK (CNN) — Touchscreen kiosks, self-checkout machines and QR-code menus were only here to help.

The dream was that these self-service technologies would recommend food we’d like at McDonald’s and speed up CVS lines. But kiosks ended up presenting way too many choices when we just wanted the burger. Self-checkout machines kept announcing there were unexpected items in the bagging area. And we got sick of looking at our phones to pick a main course at dinner.

Consumers are tired of tech that defeats the whole purpose of going out to shop and eat in person. Many miss the fleeting interactions with baristas and other human beings. The signs of our collective frustration with technology are everywhere: people waiting hours in lines at yogurt shops to meet someone and locking up their phones when they go out to dinner. A longing for in-person connection helps explain the resurgence of movie theaters, malls and Chili’s.

Fast-food chains, restaurants and retailers are now ditching endless automation and screens to humanize their stores and attract workers. All the self-service tech they pushed for years alienated their employees.

A decade ago, Starbucks baristas had personal relationships with customers. Part of the draw of working at Starbucks was that you felt like a bright spot in customers’ days, said Ryan Buell, a professor of business administration at Harvard who studies interactions between service businesses and customers.

But Starbucks transformed into a takeout stand. Customers picked up online orders of coffee and iced lemonades without saying a word to baristas. Sales slumped and many of the company’s employees felt they’d been turned into robots. They began to unionize.

Starbucks has added extra staff and is spending $1 billion on armchairs, plants and books to make its coffee shops feel like coffee shops again.

The company is “pulling the employee and customer experience back from the brink,” Buell said.

Fast-food chains, never known for their human touch, have lost business to sit-down restaurants with better service. They now want to give customers the option to do more than tap on screens to order food.

McDonald’s is training workers to emphasize hospitality, with energetic greetings to customers such as “Enjoy your meal!” and “See you soon!” according to the Wall Street Journal. Burger King is hiring 60,000 new employees and creating a customer service position in stores: the “Your Way Champion.”

&pizza, a chain offering customizable, oblong-shaped pizzas, expanded touchscreen kiosks and voice ordering systems using AI the last few years. It hoped to speed up order times and get customers to add extras.

But kiosks created a “disconnect” between crew and customers and voice AI “erased any attempt at hospitality,” Sergio Perez, the chief marketing officer at Latitude Food Group, the parent company of &pizza and Tijuana Flats, said in an interview. It recently pulled kiosks and AI ordering from its stores.

“We were so focused on the promise of digital that we forgot about the dining room,” Perez said.

Self-checkout was also supposed to be a way for stores to save money on labor and free up workers for other tasks.

But customers became frustrated with all the malfunctions they encountered at self-checkout stations. People ended up stealing more products through self-checkout than when human beings rang them up.

Walmart, Target and Costco ripped out some self-checkout stands. Amazon shut down its cashier-less Go stores.

Customers feel more rewarded by a store and “treated more valuably” when they check out with humans than self-checkout machines, researchers at Drexel University found in a 2024 study. A human ringing up customers makes them likelier to revisit in the future, the study found.

The main issue was that businesses invented solutions in search of problems that people never had, rather than finding ways to improve customers’ experiences.

They offered up newer, cheaper ways of ordering food and checking out and then tried to sell customers why they should change, said Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University and author of “The Overworked Consumer: Self-Checkouts, Supermarkets and the Do-It-Yourself Economy.”

“What we have been seeing is putting the cart in front of the proverbial horse,” he said.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Six people were arrested Wednesday night after police broke up a series of reckless driving incidents on Indianapolis’ west side, according to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.

IMPD, Indiana State Police and Cumberland Metropolitan Police Department worked together during the enforcement operation.

Officers said they saw drivers spinning their vehicles in parking lots, blocking intersections and speeding near people who had gathered to watch.

Police dispersed the crowds and stopped six vehicles. All six vehicles were towed.

The drivers were preliminarily arrested on Level 6 felony charges of criminal recklessness, police said. One driver also had a failure-to-appear warrant stemming from a reckless driving case in Johnson County.

The arrests come as Indianapolis police continue to respond to illegal spinning and other organized reckless driving activity.

Police are asking people who see illegal spinning, street takeovers or reckless driving to call 911 or IMPD’s non-emergency line at 317-327-3811.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Mitch Frazier is leaving IBJ Media to become president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

Gov. Mike Braun announced Thursday that Frazier will take over as IEDC president Oct. 5. He will succeed Josh Richardson, who is leaving the position Oct. 2 to move to the private sector.

Frazier joined IBJ Media as president in 2025 after serving as president and CEO of AgriNovus Indiana. At IBJ Media, he oversaw the company’s day-to-day operations, including its Indianapolis Business Journal and Inside INdiana Business operations.

Before joining IBJ Media, Frazier was CEO of AgriNovus Indiana and previously served as CEO of Reynolds Farm Equipment. He also held leadership roles at ExactTarget, including during the company’s initial public offering and acquisition by Salesforce.

Frazier has prior experience with the IEDC. Earlier in his career, he served as the agency’s director of media relations while Nate Feltman was Indiana’s secretary of commerce. Frazier also served on active duty in the U.S. Army and worked in federal civilian public affairs.

As IEDC president, Frazier will lead the state’s economic development organization, which works to attract new investment to Indiana, support existing businesses and develop partnerships with communities and industries.

Indiana Secretary of Commerce Chuck Goodrich said Frazier’s background in business and public service will help advance the state’s economic development efforts.

Richardson has served as IEDC president since October 2025. Goodrich credited Richardson with helping guide the agency through a period of leadership transition and increased coordination between economic development and workforce efforts.

Frazier’s departure comes about 16 months after he joined IBJ Media. The company announced his hiring in May 2025, when he succeeded as president from his role leading AgriNovus Indiana.