- Police Brutality Watch

A community advocacy group has asked the governor to intervene in the investigation of the shooting by police officers of a shoplifting suspect in the median of Interstate 64 two months ago. The Justice Resource Center of Louisville, Ky., sent a letter Monday asking Gov. Mitch Daniels to pressure Harrison County Prosecutor Dennis Byrd to release his report on the shooting.The unarmed shoplifting suspect, 36-year-old Trent Marion of Louisville, was wounded in both wrists and the right eye at the end of a late-afternoon Jan. 20 chase that had begun at a Kroger store in Louisville and ended about 25 miles away in southern Indiana. State police have completed an investigation and forwarded a report to Byrd, who on Monday declined to comment further on the case. The Rev. Louis Coleman, the Justice Resource Center's director, said the investigation has taken too long. "There is a hidden agenda that needs to be uncovered," Coleman said. "We feel very strongly that he knows there was some bad policing and he does not want to reveal the situation." Coleman's group also has asked the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission to investigate Byrd's handling of the case and has filed a complaint with the Indiana attorney general's office. [more]