By Tim Brouk / For Based in Lafayette

In my many years of covering local arts and entertainment, there would be the occasional Purdue University home football weekend that would be so packed that you wish you had a clone or three to experience it all. With the Notre Dame Fighting Irish arriving to wage football warfare with their old Boilermaker rivals at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, both sides of the Wabash will be buzzing with live music events featuring hip-hop, thrash metal, punk rock, Celtic music and classical. And be sure to finish it all off by supporting area visual artists at Art on the Wabash.

Exhorder with Persevere, Karve and Intoxicated, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, North End Pub, 2100 Elmwood Ave., Lafayette — Lafayette metalheads must attend The Doom Room’s latest presentation — thrash and “groove metal” progenitors Exhorder. The New Orleans outfit first hit the scene in 1986 and had a profound influence on expanding thrash metal’s sound. Around the same time, a little band called Pantera was growing and were influenced by the sound. Phil Anselmo, Pantera singer and New Orleans native, took the sound to an even higher place. Still, Exhorder enjoyed some early 1990s national success with two classics, “Slaughter in the Vatican” (1990) and “The Law” (1992). The band was on Roadrunner Records, a metal label that was home to Sepultura, Machine Head and even baby Nickelback. Exhorder’s original run ended in 1994, but the band reformed in 2017 and has been going ever since, releasing new music like 2024’s “Defectum Omnium.” Exhorder is touring with Florida thrashers Intoxicated, and Greater Lafayette’s own Persevere and Karve will open. Failure Records also helped bring in this tour as well. Tickets.

Art on the Wabash, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27, Tapawingo Park, West Lafayette— More than 40 local and regional artists will once again converge upon West Lafayette’s Tapawingo Park for Art on the Wabash, an annual outdoor art fair that also features live music, food trucks and beer from People’s Brewing Company. The event is a must for art fans — buyers and looky-loos alike.

DJ Diesel and T-Pain with DJ Navic, DJ Pain, Orville Kline and Stevie Mac, 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, Tippecanoe Amphitheater, 4449 Indiana 43 North — What started as a club show featuring the nation’s largest DJ with the most NBA rebounds — DJ Diesel, aka hall of famer Shaquille O’Neal — has grown into an outdoor hip-hop festival. When the king of Autotune T-Pain, aka Teddy Pain, was added to the bill, promoters moved the festivities from the Neon Cactus to the Tippecanoe Amphitheater in the outskirts of West Lafayette. T-Pain was one of the most featured singers in the late ‘00s with his vocals showing up on hits by Kanye West, Flo Rida and Chris Brown. His own music topped the charts as well with T-Pain’s second album, “Epiphany” reaching No. 1 in 2007 and his single “Buy You a Drank (Shawty Snappin’)” also reaching No. 1 on the charts. The tune was a follow-up to his previous top-5 release, the classic “I’m ‘n Luv (wit a Stripper).” O’Neal’s main gig is still the NBA, serving as co-host of “Inside the NBA” on ESPN, but the 7-feet, 1-incher has maintained his beat-making chops over the years at festivals and club gigs. Among the four opening acts will be Chicago area talents DJ Navic and Orville Kline, a brightly mohawked DJ, producer and guitarist. $40. Tickets.

Lafayette Symphony Orchestra, 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26, Long Center for the Performing Arts, 111 N. Sixth St., Lafayette — The Lafayette Symphony Orchestra will open its 2026–27 season with a program exploring the many vibrant and multifaceted identities that make up the American experience — and the ways music can bring those voices together. Under the direction of conductor and LSO artistic director Kellen Gray, “AutochthonoUS: Stories of WE the People” features music that reflects the complexity, energy and diversity of the American experience. The concert will showcase Leonard Bernstein’s lively “Candide Overture,” “Fanfare for Life” by Kimo Williams and William Grant Still’s “Symphony No. 4 Autochthonous,” a work that imagines America as a place shaped by ingenuity, individuality and shared possibility. The word autochthonous refers to peoples’ originating in the place where they are presently found, despite ancestral background or genetic origins. $18-$45. Tickets.

Flatfoot 56 with Criminal Record and Vicious Entry, Saturday, Sept. 26, People’s Brewing Company, 2006 N. Ninth St., Lafayette — Highland bagpipes and punk rock is a unique combination that has served Chicago’s Flatfoot 56 well for 25 years. The five-piece band sports a Celtic punk sound with Josh Robieson wailing on the pipes as well as mandolin during a typical set. Fans of Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly will be pleased with the Flatfoot 56 sound. The band is no stranger to Lafayette, however. Flatfoot 56 was lured down to Lafayette multiple times during Green Room Rockers’ epic late ‘00s peak, and Green Room was often tapped to play the Chicago area with them, even performing at Flatfoot vocalist and guitarist Tobin Bawinkel’s wedding. Very cool for Mom & Pop Productions to bring the band back after a decade-plus gap so that a new generation can witness bagpipes and punk rock together at last. Area punks Criminal Record and Vicious Entry will open this show. Tickets.

Tim Brouk is a longtime arts and entertainment reporter. He writes here (almost) weekly, tracking things to do for Based in Lafayette.

BONUS CUTS

Star City Nights returns downtown Lafayette from 6 p.m.-midnight Friday, Sept. 25. The festival, featuring two stages, food trucks, hands-on creative activities and assorted vendors, is in its second year on Main Street, between Fourth and Ninth streets, after rebranding the retired Starry Night in West Lafayette and moving it across the Wabash River. Acts on the main stage: THIS Band, 7:30 p.m.; The Silkies, 8:50 p.m.; and Happy Landing, 10:15 p.m. For a lineup of indie stage performers, along with more details, check here. Admission is free.

Catch the movie “Encanto” on the scoreboard from the Loeb Stadium field, starting at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25. Gates at the ballpark in Columbian Park open at 5 p.m. Tickets: $5.

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

WLPD CHIEF DEFENDS DEPLOYMENT OF FLOCK CAMERAS TO SKEPTICAL STANDING ROOM CROWD

The West Lafayette police chief faced a skeptical, standing-room-only crowd Tuesday night at city hall, as he reviewed the city’s use automated license plate reader system, contracted through Flock Safety, in the face of growing calls to ditch the cameras.

WLPD Chief Adam Ferguson spent an hour making a case that the system, first installed in 2022 and now set up to include four automated license plate readers, has been an invaluable investigative tool for the police department.

Ferguson understood, he said, simmering concerns that have played out lately, not only locally but nationally, and that the police department was working to be as transparent as possible about how the Flock cameras were being used – and not being used.

“All I can tell you is that we’re deploying our systems with purpose and hope that you understand that we’re not using these systems against you,” Ferguson said. “Guilt shall not escape. Innocence shall not suffer.”

But in the hour of questions that followed, Ferguson was asked several different ways: Is it really worth it?

And, as one put it: At what point does tracking everyone to catch a few stop being standardized policing and start being normalized mass surveillance?

Several times, Ferguson and city officials were challenged to – if not getting rid of the cameras, altogether – at least shut them off until West Lafayette could get a better grasp on information the Flock system was capable of gathering and determine whether it was being collected in the police department’s name to allow a third-party business to use or sell local data in unsuspecting or nefarious ways.

When Ferguson said he would admit he wasn’t an IT expert, as audience members challenged him to monitor how other communities had canceled contracts and to watch batches of YouTube breakdowns of Flock cameras being reverse engineered to show what the devices were capable of collecting, they said that was what had them uneasy.

“I think the most concerning part of all of this is that I feel like you are just repeating what you have been sold, and what you have been sold is a blatant lie,” Cameron Couts, a Lafayette resident, told Ferguson.

“They do not have our best intentions at heart like you do,” Couts said. “I can tell you have great intentions with all of this. The data that they are collecting is not the same that they are selling you, and it’s putting all of us at risk because they can then sell that data. So, I’m going to ask you to do a full review of Flock, and I mean really, really get down to the nitty gritty. What’s the data? Where’s it going? What are you guys really doing with it? … Please ask those questions and be as hard on them as we are on you tonight.”

Ferguson’s presentation Tuesday night was an expanded version of one he offered to the city council earlier in the month. A Flock representative had been expected to be there but canceled a day before, when the city found out the staffer was no longer with the company, according to the chief.

West Lafayette has three operating cameras installed through a contract with Flock, including at Sagamore Parkway near Cumberland Avenue; one looking toward Harrison Bridge and traffic coming into West Lafayette; and one on State Street checking traffic coming into the city from downtown Lafayette. The city had another on Sagamore Parkway near Soldiers Home Road which has been out of commission since it was vandalized in August.

The city also has an automated license plate reader system for its parking enforcement and a separate system in patrol cars. Ferguson said those three systems and the data they collect are not connected.

The Flock cameras are considered fixed-point systems, snapping pictures of license plates numbers, along with make and model and rear-facing images of vehicles, and the date and time – as Ferguson put it, “at one location and one point in time.” Ferguson said the cameras are not set up to gather audio, automatic registration information from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, facial recognition of drivers or cell phone data of occupants.

Before West Lafayette installed its automated license-plate recognition cameras in 2022, the city council imposed rules that limited how police could use the technology, limited expansion and dictated 30 days as a maximum time data collected could be kept.

Ferguson said Tuesday that WLPD keeps data for seven days for routine access, and up to 30 days for restricted recovery. After 30 days, the data is deleted, unless preserved as evidence in a specific case or required by law, Ferguson said.

West Lafayette is part of a shared local network of Flock cameras in West Lafayette that includes six for the Purdue Police Department; two for the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Office; and eight for The Launch, a private apartment complex in West Lafayette. Ferguson said local police agencies also share information from roughly 20 contracted by the Lafayette Police Department and other private businesses that have provided permission.

Ferguson said WLPD uses Flock information when the system sends an alert about a plate or vehicle that may correspond with a case and in searches when investigating a reported crime, a missing or wanted person, stolen vehicle or a known suspect vehicle. Ferguson said the alerts are leads, not probable cause, and demand verification and follow-up for corroborating evidence in a case.

Ferguson said that since 2022, the automated license plate reader system had contributed to 301 cases, including 48 arrests, 24 warrants served, 14 stolen vehicles or plates recovered, and 12 hit-and-run investigations.

Leading up to Tuesday’s presentation, Ferguson checked data on his personal vehicle over the course of 30 days, coming up with 50 observations by the Flock compared with 173 trips he personally logged. In that time, he said, the system had a gap at one point of nearly 10 days when his vehicle didn’t show up in Flock data. And in that time, he said, 140 of his trips – or nearly 81% – weren’t detected by Flock.

“I was observed going to Rotary – it doesn’t know that I was in Rotary,” Ferguson said. “It observed me going on a few occasions to my church. It doesn’t know where my church is, doesn’t know which church I’m affiliated with. … A comprehensive look, giving myself to AI using ALPR data, captured moments in time, not a comprehensive picture of who I am or where I was going.”

During an hour of questions that followed, no one spoke up in favor of keeping the technology on West Lafayette roads.

Among the questions and concerns:

• What would WLPD do to guarantee that federal agencies, including Immigraton and Customs Enforcement, weren’t tapping into West Lafayette data via Flock – despite assurances that the city hadn’t opted into sharing that information?

• What assurances would the community have that additional features, beyond license plate readers, would be added later?

• And what assurances were there that West Lafayette police – and officers with other local agencies – were using the data properly, given the number of cases coming to light in other communities where officers were accused of using Flock cameras to stalk people?

“Who is auditing the police?” Joshua Bustamante asked. “I don’t believe it should be the police’s job to say, ‘Trust me, bro, we’re doing our jobs.’”

Ferguson said internal audits of Flock searches were being done and that violations would lead to discipline or termination.

“I am in favor of professional safeguards and responsible ALPR use,” Ferguson said. “I can’t stand up here, won’t stand up here, and tell you that there’s not a risk that somebody could misuse the system. I’m saying that we will address that appropriately if we believe that it happens. … ALPR systems have legitimate public safety value, but I believe that we can use those systems responsibly, transparently and within appropriate limits to balance the needs of the community with public safety.”

Lafayette police have faced similar questions about Flock cameras. Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski, who told city council members there in August that he backed LPD’s use of the technology, announced last month that he was setting up an internal technology review panel to address questions about a number of AI-related issues.

Ferguson said he was open to that sort of approach in West Lafayette, too.

Questions surfaced Tuesday evening about a database assembled by USA Today that tracked use of Flock cameras, based on records requests of agencies across the country. Ferguson said his agency was still trying to figure out how that included West Lafayette use of Flock amid some 78 million searches documented.

“We did ask some questions about where that came from, and essentially through some contractual loophole with another agency that enjoyed sharing access with everybody, they were able to get the data in the form that it shows with USA Today,” Ferguson said. “Those things have since been changed. Our concern was how did our data, West Lafayette data, get on USA Today without our permission?”

The rumbling in the crowd amounted to: That’s the point. How can the city protect local data if it’s left in the hands of a private company and subject to contractual loopholes?

“You’ve got to shut it down,” Couts said.

Several West Lafayette City Council members were in the crowd Tuesday night. So was Mayor Erin Easter.

“I think our police have deployed the technology properly, and I trust the West Lafayette Police Department with the work they do and the care they take,” Easter said. “I think Chief Ferguson is committed to following up with questions tonight and being transparent.”

As for the terms of Flock’s contract and the city’s resolution overseeing use of automated license plate readers, Easter said: “I think there’s an opportunity to review things.”

More questions

City officials offered note cards during Tuesday night’s session for more questions about West Lafayette’s use of automated license plate readers. Ferguson said he would post answers by Oct. 2 here: www.westlafayette.in.gov/government/police-department/crime-and-safety/flock-safety.

Here are the slides from Chief Adam Ferguson’s presentation

WLPD automated license plate reader presentation slides

10.7MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Watch the session here

IN RELATED NEWS

INDIANAPOLIS OFFICERS CHARGED IN ALLEGED FLOCK CAMERA ABUSE: Five Indianapolis police officers were charged Wednesday with fraud and misconduct after being accused of misusing automated license plate reader technology after internal IMPD audits from August and September. Prosecutor Ryan Mears said Wednesday, when announcing the charges: “This is definitely just the beginning. … The message I’d have today is this is just the initial review.” WTHR had this report: “5 current, former IMPD officers charged for alleged misuse of Flock license plate reader technology.”

The following story was published this week by Free Press Indiana. It’s used by permission here:

Indiana sees surge of cities, counties ending Flock camera contracts

By Carson Gerber / Free Press Indiana

A growing number of Indiana cities and counties are doing away with license plate reading cameras after fierce pushback from local residents saying the devices violate their constitutional rights.

In just the last 30 days, officials in Fort Wayne, Chesterton and Marshall, Starke, Kosciusko and Noble counties have voted to cancel or not renew contracts with Flock Safety, the nation’s largest provider of the devices.

Those communities join Bloomington and Monroe County, which were among the first in the state to cut ties with the company due to residents’ concerns that the devices amount to an illegal search and seizure.

The cameras take photos of vehicles and their license plates as they pass by. The photos are added to a searchable network used by law enforcement agencies. Police argue the cameras provide automated, real-time vehicle data that significantly speeds up criminal investigations and helps locate missing persons.

In Indiana, there are more than 3,700 automated license plate readers, including at least 2,930 documented Flock Safety cameras, according to crowdsourced tracking data from the nonprofit Eyes Off Indiana, which calls for more regulations of the cameras.

That ranks the state ninth in the nation for the total number of cameras.

Backlash grows

Walker Lasbury, president of Eyes Off Indiana, said the devices have created a rare “unicorn” issue drawing opposition from both conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity and left-of-center organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union.

Both organizations have recently launched campaigns in the state to raise grassroots support for banning or regulating the systems, contributing to the growing backlash, he said.

“It seems like everyone’s starting to take notice of this issue, and they’re starting to bring the issue to their local elected representatives,” Lasbury said.

Fort Wayne council members said they voted to end their contract for 36 Flock cameras after an “overwhelming” number of residents reached out opposing them.

In Kosciusko County, the council voted on Sept. 10 to end its contract after hours of public comment in opposition.

Resident Greg Henderson told the council the cameras represented government overreach and pointed to instances in which officers used incorrect data provided by the devices to arrest or detain innocent people.

“My point is that these systems aren’t infallible,” he said. “They’re not inerrant.”

Indiana has no laws regulating the cameras. Lasbury said he supports the cities and counties that have ended contracts with Flock, but argued state lawmakers need to take action to protect every person.

“When you’re traveling from county to county, your privacy protections shouldn’t change,” he said. “For that reason, it’s the job of the state to enact regulation that protects Hoosiers, no matter what county or city you’re in.”

A growing number of lawmakers are expressing concern.

Republican U.S. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (IN-3) said he is collaborating on federal legislation to restrict or eliminate government use of Flock-style surveillance networks on public roads.

“We don’t want to be Russia,” he told 21Alive News on Wednesday. “We don’t want to be a communist country where the government can watch our every move.”

‘Help solve crimes’

But other cities are doubling down on using the cameras.

Muncie Mayor Dan Ridenour said he fully supports Flock cameras for the “positive results it has provided.” He said officers are required to take special training to use the system to reduce misuse.

“All we want to do is to help solve crimes,” Ridenour said in a video posted to Facebook.

In Michigan City, the police department is asking the city council for $300,000 to install seven more swivel cameras and buy a portable Flock Safety Trailer and a new drone. Assistant Chief Kyle Shiparski promised city council members additional safeguards if the money is approved.

“The goal is legitimate access when officers need it, documentation when they use it and accountability afterwards,” Shiparski told the council Tuesday.

In Fort Wayne, after the council voted to end its Flock contract, the police department said in a statement that the devices had “proven to be a valuable investigative resource for our officers and detectives.”

“The department continues to believe it can be used responsibly while maintaining appropriate safeguards for privacy, accountability, and oversight,” the release said.

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

MILSAP LAYS OUT APPEAL OF BRIBERY CONVICTION

An attorney for Amanda Milsap, a Lafayette mental health therapist convicted in April of attempting to bribe the victim in a domestic violence and gun possession case against her former husband to get her to not testify in his trial, argued in a new court filing that her conviction and six-year sentence should be tossed.

Milsap filed an appeal in May of her conviction, based on charges loosely connected to an extended plot that led to the Jan. 18 attempted murder of a Tippecanoe County judge.

In a brief filed Sept. 16 with the Indiana Court of Appeals, Milsap laid out why she’s asking to vacate the convictions and dismiss all charges. Short of that, the appeal challenges the aggravated sentence, saying it wasn’t warranted and should be reduced to the minimum for each count, leaving her with a total sentence of one year, fully suspended to probation.

A jury found Milsap guilty of charges that she conveyed a $10,000 offer from the Vice Lords gang to a victim to not appear or testify in a January trial of Thomas Moss, her former husband.

Special Judge Lisa Swaim, a Cass County Superior Court judge assigned to her case, gave Milsap a maximum, six-year sentence, including three years in prison.

In the new court filing, Milsap’s attorney, Early McCoy, wrote that Milsap was charged after the victim scheduled to testify an upcoming trial for Thomas Moss contacted Lafayette police after hearing that Tippecanoe Superior Court 2 Judge Steve Meyer and his wife, Kim, had been shot through the front door of their Lafayette home by a masked man. The victim, already concerned because the shooting was two days ahead from Moss’ trial on 2024 domestic violence and gun charges in Meyer’s court, reported that she’d had a similar situation with someone coming to her door in Pennsylvania a week earlier.

When reporting that, according to the appeal, the victim also told Lafayette police she’d been contacted by Milsap a couple of weeks earlier, saying that “Milsap informed her that the Vice Lords wanted to pay (her) $10,000 in exchange for (her) agreeing not to testify in Moss’s upcoming jury trial.”

Investigators later charged Moss and three other alleged co-conspirators of deploying a plot that included the attempted murder of the judge and going to the victim’s home with plans to kill her, all in a suspected plan to sidetrack his trial.

Before the alleged plot escalated to that point, Milsap was accused of playing a role in trying to silence the victim in Moss’ trial.

Read more

RICHARD ALLEN’S ATTORNEY TO COURT OF APPEALS: ABBY AND LIBBY’S ‘REAL KILLER GOES FREE’

An attorney for Richard Allen argued Monday morning to the Indiana Court of Appeals that evidence was tainted in a 2024 trial by a confirmation bias from investigators focused on the wrong suspect and by a judge’s decisions to make way for it all before and during a four-week jury trial, leading to his conviction and 130-year prison sentence for the 2017 murders of Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German near a trail close to the town’s Monon High Bridge.

Mark Leeman, Allen’s appellate attorney, argued during a 75-minute hearing before three Court of Appeals judges that the 2024 trial in Carroll Circuit Court had been “unfair and unreliable.”

Leeman argued that special Judge Fran Gull made mistakes by not holding a hearing into the circumstances that led to a 2022 search of Allen’s Delphi home, 5½ years after the 2017 murders; leaving him in an isolated unit at the Westville Correctional Facility for months before his trial in the name of safekeeping, despite signs of he was deteriorating mentally and physically; leaving out context during the trial about Allen’s mental state that called into question the credibility of dozens of times investigators said he confessed to the killings; rejecting use of police sketches of suspects during the trial; and blocking defense attorneys’ attempts to introduce a theory to jurors that other suspects, tied to Odinism, had murdered the girls in a pagan ritual sacrifice.

“We want to know that you got the right guy – we can’t live in a world where the real killer goes free,” Leeman argued Monday. “The jury heard only one story. The trial court systematically barred Allen from proving that he was not the man on the bridge, not the man in the woods killing the girls, and not the man who left that bizarre and deliberate scene. And unconstitutional because the state told the judge a false story to get the warrant for Allen’s house – the warrant its entire case was built on. This is not how a system should work; it is how a system fails.”

Deputy Attorney General Ellen Meilaender defended the trial court’s verdict and sentence, arguing it should stand. Meilaender argued that any errors in the trial were harmless in the face of accounts given of Feb. 13, 2017, on the Monon High Bridge Trail.

“It was Richard Allen himself who identified himself as Bridge Guy in his statements to police,” Meilaender said.

The Court of Appeals panel left Monday’s hearing with no comment about a timetable for a ruling in Allen’s request for a new trial.

Abby, 13, and Libby, 14, students at Delphi Community Middle School, were killed after being dropped off to spend time during a day off from school on the Monon High Bridge Trail, part of Delphi’s trail system. They were found dead in the woods the following day, their necks slashed. Despite video found on Abby’s phone of a man following them on the Monon High Bridge, the case went without an arrest for more than five years until investigators zeroed in on Allen, who had gone to police in the days after the murders to tell about being the trail that day. Years later, he was left to deny that he was the Bridge Guy in the video or the one who killed the girls.

The trial was built around a prosecution case that said Allen was, in fact, Bridge Guy, linking him through dozens of admissions months after his arrest and – despite no DNA evidence at the scene or in a search of his house five years later – to an unspent bullet found at the crime scene that investigators say had been cycled through a gun later found in a search of Allen’s home.

A jury selected from Allen County deliberated four days at the Carroll Circuit Court in Delphi before finding Allen guilty in November 2024. Gull, an Allen County Superior Court judge appointed to the case shortly after Allen’s arrest in October 2022, sentenced him in December 2024 to 130 years in prison.

Allen’s appeal took issue with the warrant to search his home before his arrest; whether confessions should have been considered by the jury; and whether a series of decisions by Gull leading up to and during the trial allowed Allen’s attorneys room to present a complete defense.

The Court of Appeals judges – Nancy Vaidik, Robert Altice and Elaine Brown – asked Leeman at the start what he thought the most significant argument was, before scattering questions across the full swath of Allen’s points.

Conditions and confessions: Moved from Carroll County Jail days after his arrest as part of a safekeeping order issued by former Circuit Judge Benjamin Diener, Allen spent 13 months in a state prison, largely in an isolated cell in a segregated portion of the prison, when Allen’s attorneys argued that prison policy suggests a 30-day limit on solitary confinement.

Leeman argued that the state “actively fought to keep him in solitary confinement,” even after a visit from a doctor, who “sees that he’s incommunicado on the floor, covered in feces, in filth, that he’s got feces coming out of his mouth, that he’s basically almost a vegetable,” leading to Allen being given doses of Haldol, an anti-psychotic medication.

Leeman argued that pretrial conditions call told judges were “unprecedented” brought on a psychotic state that led to admissions overheard – both by fellow inmates assigned to monitor what he said and in phone calls to his family – that he’d killed Abby and Libby.

Leeman argued that the conditions, while not an interrogation, amounted to coercion leading to Allen’s statements. Leeman argued that when Allen’s trial lawyers raised that point, it was brushed off by Gull.

Meilaender contended that Allen’s confessions were voluntary, pointing to ones that came before and after the diagnosis of psychosis. She said the record suggests that Allen, who had pre-existing mental health issues, started making confessions under “the combined psychological effect of his religious conversion and his confrontation with the legal discovery” while he was being held.

“It was this sort of psychological need of his own to know that his family would still love him and would still forgive him,” Meilaender argued. “That was very important to him. That’s evident in the calls that he makes to them. That’s why he has this need to tell them, ‘No, I really did do this.’”

Meilaender also argued that Allen had better conditions than other inmates being held in the segregated unit at Westville – despite Leeman’s reference to it as “the hole.” She said Allen had access to a computer tablet, TV and some visits that others did not.

Leeman said jurors did not get the full impact of Allen’s state of mind, when they were shown video of him being moved from one part of the unit to another. During the trial, Gull allowed jurors to see the video but not hear it in context with the audio.

“The screams for mercy or screams for his father – the videos undermine not just the credibility of his confessions, but every single witness that the state put on the stand to say that those confessions were cogent, coherent, clear,” Leeman said. “They had a man working full time, listening to him and saying that his confessions were true because he listened to them and felt like they were true. If the jury hears those videos … there’s no way that they reach the same conclusion that the paid guy who’s working full time to listen to Richard Allen and testify, and the conclusion he reaches. The jury’s going to say that state’s witnesses are liars.”

Vaidik said that “what really disturbs” her was that when the defense asked to get Allen out of Westville, that state said he was doing well and that everything was fine.

“And the court then doesn’t have a hearing and says, ‘We’re not going to move him,’” Vaidik said. “Isn’t that of itself coercion?”

Meilaender argued it wasn’t. She argued that those dealing with Allen’s mental health were telling him it wasn’t in his interest to say the things he was saying to them.

“During that time,” Meilaender said, “they were not attempting to exploit his mental health. They were not interrogating him at that time.”

Vaidik continued, recounting that Allen was being held in a cell eight-feet wide, without control of lights and with someone outside recording everything he said or did.

“And this happened for 13 months,” Vaidik said.

Meilaender said that Allen would have faced segregated conditions in any pretrial holding, whether in a state prison or county jail, given the high-profile nature of the crime.

“Have you seen the videos?” Vaidik asked Meilaender. “Is it your position that he was treated better, or at least the same, as other people in Westville?”

Brown added: “In a pre-trial detention situation, where he’s presumed innocent?”

“There had to be protections in place, again, to protect him and his own safety, and that was what was going on,” Meilaender said. “And our case law is clear that those ordinary conditions of even restrictive housing confinement are not coercive state action that renders a statement involuntary.”

Brown replied: “You protected him into psychosis.”

Brown also said she wondered whether the court “improperly placed the burden of proof” on Allen about whether his statements were voluntary, rather than the other way around.

The sketches and possibility of other suspects: Leeman several times retrieved a sketch investigators had shared widely in the years before an arrest but that were blocked from use in the trial. One of those sketches indicated that Bridge Guy had “brown ‘poofy’ hair … was in his 20s or early 30s, youthful and medium build.” Prosecutors successfully argued a day before testimony in Allen’s trial start that the sketches had been used as a tool for investigators only.

Altice said the sketch Leeman was showing “is hearsay and that there’s a plethora of case law saying that type of thing should not come in.” Vaidik said that “recent case law, though, is to say that the artist’s sketch is like a picture, and if someone says it’s a fair and accurate representation, then it comes in.”

“(Witness) Betsy Blair identifies this man as Bridge Guy, and he’s not our client,” Leeman argued during Monday’s hearing. “There’s no DNA evidence. They want to make this case about when Richard Allen was on the trail system, rather than the better question, which was: Was he the only man there? The answer to that is no, he wasn’t the only man there. And you didn’t get to present the evidence of the other man who was there at the trail.”

Meilaender said Allen’s attorneys were allowed to present evidence at trial of Blair’s description and argue that it was not consistent with Bridge Guy.

“But the picture is worth a thousand words,” Vaidik said.

“Even so,” Meilaender said, “the defendant was trying to use it not for impeachment, but as substantive evidence that he was not Bridge Guy because it excluded him as being the suspect. And as the expert testified, that is not the proper use of the sketch. Just as the state couldn’t use it.”

Leeman argued that Allen’s attorneys were not able to show that other men were suspected of being Bridge Guy or tied to the crime – namely Odinists, headed by a Logansport man named Brad Holder, whose son knew the girls. The judges said the man in question had an alibi for that day, based on his work sign-out records at a landfill a half-hour away and a key fob check-in at a gym in Logansport. Leeman said Allen’s trial attorneys were blocked from refuting that alibi when Gull rejected the ritualistic murder theory.

Leeman said the way sticks were arranged on the girls – described by investigators during the trial as an attempt to hide their bodies – “was purposeful, intentional.” He said Holder posted on social media shortly after the murders a picture of a tattoo he had on his hand of a rune in a shape “that mirrors” the arrangement of sticks found on Abby in crime scene photos.

“That connection is unprecedented,” Leeman argued. “And the jury was entitled to weigh it.”

• For more on the appeal, including filings from both sides leading up to Monday’s oral arguments, check:

• Watch the Indiana Court of Appeals oral arguments here:

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

ORAL ARGUMENTS MONDAY IN RICHARD ALLEN’S APPEAL OF DELPHI MURDERS CONVICTION

Richard Allen’s attempt to show that a case built to convict him as the murderer of Delphi teens Abby Williams and Libby German was a “paper tiger” that pinned the high-profile crimes on an innocent man will go before the Indiana Court of Appeals Monday morning.

A panel of three judges are scheduled to hear oral arguments, starting at 10 a.m. Monday, Sept. 21, at an Indiana Statehouse courtroom, considering Allen’s appeal of a conviction and 130-year prison sentence after four-week trial in fall 2024.

Allen’s attorneys have argued in a series of briefs filed since December 2025 that the trial in Carroll Circuit Court was stacked against the Delphi pharmacy clerk with little opportunity to refute a prosecution built on “superficial inference stacking,” pulled together into “this story of tunnel vision into the wrong man.”

“The State’s case was a paper tiger, and the trial court systematically barred Allen from lighting a match,” Allen’s attorneys, Stacy Uliana and Mark Leeman, wrote in an April filing with the Court of Appeals.

“Had the jury known all the evidence that impeached their timeline, firearms ‘science’ and Allen’s mind at the time he was in solitary, there is more than a possibility the jury would have acquitted him,” they argued. “It has been said that ‘a half-truth masquerading as a whole truth becomes a complete untruth.’ The only way our justice system works is if the jury hears the full truth. Because the jury only heard half of the story, Allen was denied a fair trial.”

A response from the Indiana attorney general’s team in March called many of the claims offered for the appeal “meritless” or technically insufficient, arguing that the initial trial got it right.

A jury pulled from Allen County, more than 90 miles from the Carroll Circuit Court courtroom, deliberated four days before finding Allen guilty in November 2024. Fran Gull, an Allen County Superior Court judge appointed to the case shortly after Allen’s arrest in October 2022, sentenced him a month later to 130 years in prison.

Abby, 13, and Libby, 14, students at Delphi Community Middle School, were killed Feb. 13, 2017, after being dropped off to spend time during a day off from school on the Monon High Bridge Trail, part of Delphi’s trail system. They were found dead in the woods the following day, their necks slashed. Despite video found on Abby’s phone of a man following them on the Monon High Bridge, the case went without an arrest for more than five years until investigators zeroed in on Allen, who admitted to being on the trail that day but denied that he was the “Bridge Guy” in the video or the one who killed the girls.

The trial was built around a prosecution case that said Allen was, in fact, Bridge Guy, linking him through dozens of admissions months after his arrest and – despite no DNA evidence at the scene or in a search of his house five years later – to an unspent bullet found at the crime scene that investigators say had been in a gun later found in a search of Allen’s home.

In briefs filed with the appeal, Allen’s attorneys pinned arguments across three overarching points, including:

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A few notes to round out the working week …

FORMER WL CITY COUNCIL MEMBER ON COVID-ERA FRAUD CHARGES: ‘I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY’

A former West Lafayette City Council member and Purdue student body vice president facing sentencing in federal court for an alleged scheme from 2021 to 2022 to collect more than $300,000 from phony applications for COVID-19 relief money is finishing a sentence after pleading guilty in 2024 to an investigation in Indianapolis into a string of identification theft and securing fraudulent loans, court records show.

Jon Jones, 31, of Indianapolis, served nine months in jail in 2024 and now is on a community corrections house arrest program, saying he’s going through court-ordered addictions treatment, working as a data analyst at a freight brokerage and trying to make progress on restitution.

In November, Jones is scheduled to plead guilty and be sentenced Nov. 19 in federal court after signing a plea agreement in early August about money he collected from federal COVID-era business loans then spent on gambling and cryptocurrency purchases, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and documents filed with charges stemming from a nearly two-year period in 2021 and 2022.

The federal plea agreement doesn’t list a set penalty. But the offense level in court documents come with a suggested range of 27 to 41 months in federal prison.

“There isn’t much I can appropriately say about the case while the court process is ongoing, but I take responsibility for my actions and deeply regret them,” Jones said when reached by Based in Lafayette.

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$7.5 BILLION ‘AI FACTORY’ DATA CENTER PROPOSED FOR FRANKFORT

As Tippecanoe County officials consider zoning regulations that would tighten the opportunity available for data center development, the Frankfort City Council in neighboring Clinton County is planning a Sept. 28 meeting to consider a $7.5 billion data center campus north of Indiana 28, 20 miles from Lafayette.

DataOne, a French-based company, is looking to develop on 115 acres at Frankfort’s Logix Innovation Campus, at 3500 West County Road 0 North/South, about five miles east of Interstate 65.

The company said in a release that the project would include an 800,000-square-foot facility it called an AI factory – which it differentiated from data centers that store, processes and distributes digital data as “a high-density facility specifically designed to train and run artificial intelligence models.”

The company said in its release that, if approved, the project would break ground in late 2026 or early 2027, with construction taking 18 to 24 months. The project would include the company building two additional substations for power, with the data center running off 350 megawatts coming from the grid and 175 megawatts from on-site fuel cells; a closed-loop cooling system that would use approximately 22,000 gallons of water a day; and call for 200 jobs once it opens.

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By Tim Brouk / For Based in Lafayette

“Hit Your Darlings with a Car” premiere, 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 17, The Spot Tavern, 409 S. Fourth St., Lafayette — Two Purdue University May graduates will premier a short film at The Spot. However, “Hit Your Darlings with a Car” isn’t a student film because it was shot over the summer — weeks after writers and directors Eloise Alvis and Caroline Richard snagged those film production degrees from the College of Liberal Arts. Then again, “Darlings” was inspired by their Purdue film classes. Alvis summed it up: “It follows three obsessed film students who will stop at NOTHING to finish their movie and impress their professor (played by Kyle Brown, an accomplished Civic Theater of Greater Lafayette performer).” The 15-minute film is also the filmmakers’ farewell to Lafayette as they will be moving away this fall. Perhaps Hollywood will be calling …

Gallery Walk, 6-9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 18, downtown Lafayette — The final Gallery Walk of 2026 will feature 18 art-friendly venues showing the works of local and regional artists of most every medium available. Here are few worth checking out:

• “Boundaries and Networks: The Power of Lines” by Jinan Kim opening reception, Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, 102 S. 10^th St. — West Lafayette artist Jinan Kim expresses emotion through “geometric structures” in her new exhibit, which runs through Jan. 10.

• “3 Shows, 2 Artists, 1 Venue” by Lorie Amick and LaDonna Vohar, Artists’ Own, 518 Main St. — Two pillars of Artists’ Own — and the Lafayette visual arts community as a whole — will team up for sort of combined exhibits. Watercolorist Lorie Amick and fellow painter LaDonna Vohar have shown together in the past and will do so again with two solo exhibits: Amick explores the physical and mental aftermath of a serious accident through her paintings in “Impact,” and Vohar’s “Detour” looks at inspirations she has found outside of the artist’s norm. Amick and Vohar are also part of “Something to Crow About,” a multimedia show of works inspired by those caw-some birds.

• “Holding Pattern for Now” by Lisa Walcott, The Weather Station, 658 Main St., Suite 212 — Michigan sculptor Lisa Walcott’s new work explores human relationships and daily life through kinetic, inventive works.

• And live music: Clave Caribe will play from 6-8 p.m. Friday as part of the Lafayette Live series at Riehle Plaza, Second and Main streets. Free.

  

Global Fest, 3-10 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, West Lafayette — Purdue Convocations’ new season is starting with an international flavor. The long-running West Lafayette festival that got the Convos touch several years ago celebrates cultures worldwide with an emphasis on food, music and exhibits. Northwestern Avenue and other areas around Chauncey Hill will be closed to traffic to fit multiple stages and food booths serving up sounds and delicacies from across the seas. Musical headliners include Brazilian singer Bia Ferreira and Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, a Ghanian producer and musician who has released 29 albums since his 1973 start. This event is free.

Kerri Colby, 9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 19, Rat Pak Venue, 102 N. Third St., Lafayette — Downtown Lafayette will have to work again this weekend when another “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alumna comes to Rat Pak. Kerri Colby finished eighth on season 14 (2022) and popped up again for a cameo during season 15. She also competed on “Drag Race Allstars,” season 10. Born in Dallas but based in Los Angeles, Colby has since gained more glamorous lewks and performance chops. She even shared the stage with Jennifer Lopez after her “Ru” run. Colby will be joined by regional talents Aniah, Afrodytee, Pateince and Lucid. The show will be hosted by our town’s Veronica Fox. $20 and $30. Tickets.

Matthew McNeal, 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22, People’s Brewing Company, 2006 N. Ninth St., Lafayette — Fort Worth, Texas, singer-songwriter Matthew McNeal is one of the many Southern acts that calls People’s an excellent Tuesday night tour destination. Independent artists like McNeal know pickings are slim in the Midwest on a Tuesday, but People’s excellent Tuesday night series of live shows calls for smooth picking from the guitarist, who implements a fan friendly sound that borders on indie rock mixed with his Texan roots. McNeal was featured by Rolling Stone back in 2020 and has maintained a strong showing since. The young musician will be backed by a full band on this voyage around the nation. Tickets.

Tim Brouk is a longtime arts and entertainment reporter. He writes here (almost) weekly, tracking things to do for Based in Lafayette.

BONUS CUTS

Country singer Luke Bryan will just north of Lafayette Saturday, Sept. 19, when his Farm Tour comes to Prairie View Farms, on White County Road 900 South, near Brookston. Showtime: 6 p.m. Openers: Dasha, Kenny Whitmire, the Peach Pickers, and DJ Rock. They suggest getting there early to make time for traffic on the rural two-lanes heading to this one. For more on the concert stop on the Farm Tour, tickets and parking passes, here’s your link.

Brokerage Brewing Co. rolls out the barrel this weekend for the West Lafayette brewery’s annual Broktoberfest, four days of music, food trucks and beer under a tent just outside at 2516 Covington St. The music lineup: Thursday, Kyle Bledsoe (3-6 p.m.), Kindred Spirit Project (6-9 p.m.); Friday, Lucas Peterson (3-6 p.m.), Ex-Bombers (6-8 p.m.), Blue Sky (8-11 p.m.); Saturday, Grant Spence (1-3 p.m.), Not Sisters (3-5 p.m.), Sound of West Side March-a-Thon, (3:45 p.m.), Star City Rhythm Revival (5-8 p.m.), No Rest 4 the Weekend (8-11 p.m.); Sunday, Beers and Hymns.

The World Film Forum, organized by the School of Languages and Cultures at Purdue, opens 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 22, concentrating on global horror films. Films will be shown in their original languages with English subtitles. From the promos: The movies “will be introduced by a faculty member and followed by a discussion, giving audiences an opportunity to examine the films within their cultural and historical contexts.” All screenings will be at 7 p.m. in Room 239 of Stanley Coulter Hall, 640 Oval Drive. Free parking is available in the University Street Garage after 5 p.m. each time. The lineup:

• Sept. 22: “Meander,” 2020, France, director Mathieu Turi; presented by Emma BenHadj, a lecturer of French.

• Sept. 29: “Marebito,” 2004, Japan, director Shimizu Takashi; presented by Pedro Bassoe, associate professor of Japanese.

• Oct. 6: “La Llorona,” 2019, Guatemala, director Jayro Bustamante; presented by Cara Kinnally, associate professor of Spanish.

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

PURDUE ENROLLMENT UP, JUST SHY OF CAMPUS RECORD FOR FALL 2026

Buoyed by the third largest freshman class in Purdue’s history, the West Lafayette campus’ student body is the second largest ever for the university, coming 40 students shy of record enrollment set two years ago, according to a census reported Monday.

Enrollment was 55,079 on the West Lafayette campus, as of Sept. 10, according to Purdue’s data. That’s up 428 students – or 0.8% more – than at the start of the fall 2025 semester.

The record of 55,119 students came in the fall 2024 semester.

Combined with the Indianapolis campus, which Purdue considers an extension of the main campus in West Lafayette, overall enrollment was shown at 57,688 – up 0.6% from a year earlier.

The main campus topped 50,000 students for the first time in 2022. A decade ago, in fall 2016, Purdue crossed the 40,000 level.

Purdue officials had been predicting through the summer and at the start of the semester a freshman class that would top 10,000 for a third time in university history.

That happened, with the arrival of 10,173 freshman on the West Lafayette campus and 645 in Indianapolis. That was an increase of 14% over fall 2025 for the main campus, according to university figures. It trailed only the freshman classes of 10,628 in 2024 and 10,191 in 2021.

According to the university, Purdue admitted 75% of all undergraduate applicants who live in Indiana — which it touted as the highest percentage in five years — and less than 50% of all non-Indiana residents.

AS SCHOOL REFERENDUM HEADS TO BALLOT, WL ANTICIPATES RATE WILL STAY FLAT IN FIRST YEAR

Better than expected assessed valuations from recent commercial construction means the West Lafayette Community School Corp. would be able to keep its property tax referendum rate flat, at the current 37 cents per $100 in valuation, the school board learned Monday evening.

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LSC’S INTERNAL SUPERINTENDENT SEARCH LEADS TO KATIE RECKARD

The Lafayette school board looked in-house, as it said it would from the start, on Monday selecting assistant superintendent Katie Reckard as the district’s next superintendent, starting July 1, 2027.

Reckard – who has served two stints as assistant superintendent since 2016, sandwiched around a one-year run as superintendent of Western School Corp. in Howard County – will replace Les Huddle, who plans to retire at the end of the school year after 15 years with LSC.

“We have been fortunate to have very stable executive leadership in our district – the LSC has had two superintendents in the past 31 years,” Julie Peretin, LSC school board president, said ahead of Monday’s vote. Before Huddle, former Superintendent Ed Eiler was in the position for 16 years.

“One of the skills we admire in Mr. Huddle is his ability to identify excellent educators and develop them into strong and capable leaders,” Peretin said. “We wanted a candidate that could continue making positive strides toward our goals with an understanding of what that looks like in our community. We desired someone with the established relationships to build on the solid foundation that has been already been laid.”

Reckard said she was honored and grateful.

“LSC means a great deal to me,” Reckard said. “I promise to you, and I commit to you, that I will work hard. And bottom line is, I will do what’s best for our students.”

After an internal search started on word in June of Huddle’s retirement plans, Reckard’s selection came on a 5-0 vote, with one abstention by board member Oscar Trujillo. (Board member Brent Clemenz was absent from Monday evening’s meeting.)

Trujillo said his abstention – neither a yes nor a no vote on Reckard’s selection – was “not reflective of our new superintendent.” Instead, he referenced questions from some teachers, including those leading the Lafayette Education Association, during an August hearing about how the LSC school board conducted the search, including how the board didn’t venture outside the available pool of administrators in the district.

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FORMER WEST LAFAYETTE CITY COUNCIL MEMBER PLEADS ON $326,000 IN COVID RELIEF FRAUD ALLEGATIONS

A former West Lafayette City Council member is expected to formally plead guilty after a federal investigation accused him of wire fraud involving $326,000 he collected in phony applications for COVID-19 relief for a business with no employees and no customers.

Jon Jones, 31, is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 19 in federal court after signing a plea agreement in early August about money he collected then spent on gambling and cryptocurrency purchases, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and documents filed with charges stemming from a nearly two-year period in 2021 and 2022.

According to a guilty plea filed Aug. 10, Jones was living in Lafayette and a student at the IU School of Medicine when he filed a series of applications for COVID-related aid for Med School Side Hustle LLC, a business purported to do tutoring.

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PURDUE PROVOST: TIME TO ‘OWN IT’ ON BETTER COMMUNICATION AFTER FACULTY’S VOTE OF NO-CONFIDENCE

In his first interview since closing out Purdue’s last academic year as the target of a vote of no confidence from the faculty-led University Senate, Purdue Provost Patrick Wolfe said there are things he could have done better as allegations of his being distant and disconnected from day-to-day realities on campus gained traction during the spring 2026 semester.

Wolfe said he understood he was running point for Purdue’s administration at a time when pressures on the university – and higher education, in general – pushed just about every corner of campus.

Monday afternoon, Wolfe, who has been provost since 2023, heads into the first meeting with the full University Senate since an April 20 session where 74% of the body signed off on accusations about “unilateral decision-making,” a climate of self-censorship on campus, and heavy-handed treatment in hiring, admissions and campus policies, first lodged publicly in a Purdue chapter of the American Association of University Professors’ call for Wolfe to resign.

At the time, then-President Mung Chiang and Purdue Trustees Chairman Gary Lehman stood by Wolfe, calling the faculty vote “misinformed,” “lacking in authority” and warranting no response.

In fresh letters sent in August to faculty and students to start the fall 2026 semester – and throughout an interview this week with Based in Lafayette – Wolfe said work is being done to improve communication.

“As good leaders, you own it, you take responsibility, you learn what you can from the disagreements and feedback that’s offered in good faith, and you take it on board and you commit to doing better at communicating and engaging,” Wolfe said. “Then you’ve got to go out and do it.”

Here are excerpts from that conversation with Wolfe, the top academic officer at Purdue, covering the vote of no confidence, as well as Purdue’s approach to AI, enrollment trends and a summer that included a change in leadership at Hovde Hall.

Question: What was going through your head on that day, in that moment, when the University Senate vote came down?

Patrick Wolfe: I would say we make decisions collectively as a leadership team, and there’s no unilateral decisions that emanate from any one of us. The thing that maybe stuck out the most to me was just how much support I received from the rest of our team here, all of whom understand that we don’t make decisions unilaterally or in a vacuum. I’m so pleased to be just able to sit with you here today and have an opportunity generally this semester to take on board the feedback, to communicate more, to engage more, to do all these things and use the muscles that we built. We just didn’t use them as much as we could have over the past few years.

Question: Why do you think that was?

Patrick Wolfe: I think in every organization, culture, tone and communication style are set from the top. And every leader is going to put a different stamp on what I would call the house communication style. The tone and tenor of any leader are going to depend on the experience base of the leader, their past experiences, their future experiences and also on external factors. I think we all signed up for a pretty wild ride in the sense that we none of us quite knew that so many buffeting forces were likely to impinge on the sector in quite the way that they did after Mung and I started our kind of joint tenure.

Good leaders take responsibility. And I think we’re a place that values open and robust debate, and everybody’s entitled their opinion. I’d much rather have people surfacing criticisms and bringing them to me and my attention and my team’s attention and our leadership team’s attention than the other way around.

You probably saw in my communications this semester, we’ve probably had more interactions with the new Senate leadership in the past two month than we had maybe in the preceding 3½ years, I would say. It’s part and parcel of the job to make decisions in the best interests of Purdue and to help own those decisions. You’ve got to be willing to take the heat for decisions, but at the same time I think we can and should – and will – communicate better and engage better. I think it’s important and it’s incumbent on any leader to take the feedback, find the good faith in the feedback where you can, look to action it, and own it. I mean, with a large campus and a large operation, there’s never going to be a situation where everybody is rendered happy by every decision. But certainly, in my experience as dean (of the College of Science), the first five years I was here, being able to communicate openly and transparently and share down and hold town halls and be able to do ad hoc improvised chats with whomever, I think we’re all excited to get back to that culture and style of communication. We know how to do it, and we’re excited to be able to do it better than we’ve been able to do it in the past few years.

Question: Do you think taking that approach you’re talking about now might have changed the trajectory of the conversation last semester? The AAUP got things rolling with its letter and allegations in January or February, and it didn’t really map all the way out until April, just before finals. Do you think it would have helped having coming forward and saying, OK, you’re saying this, here’s how I’m going to change? Or, Here’s what I would like to say to show that’s not necessarily the whole picture? Could you have done that? And should you have done that?

Patrick Wolfe: I do think it could have changed the trajectory of things.

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THIS AND THAT: THE SENATE DISTRICT 23 RECOUNT RULING

The Indiana Recount Commission on Friday officially recertified results in the Senate District 23 Republican primary, a day after the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that the three-member commission should have counted six absentee ballot in state Sen. Spencer Deery’s favor, maintaining his three-vote victory over challenger Paula Copenhaver.

What remains: A full opinion from the five justices after a ruling posted Thursday afternoon that cited a provision in Indiana’s election code – one that had been at the heart of the recount case – that should have preserved voters’ intent despite human error in how ballots were marked by election officials.

Here’s a closer look at the arguments Thursday that led to the Supreme Court decision just a few hours later:

Here are a few other bits and pieces.

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Firefighters, police and first responders across Greater Lafayette joined mayors and an early morning crowd at the Tippecanoe County Fairgrounds Coliseum Friday to honor those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, ringing a fire bell 15 times at 8:46 a.m., the moment terrorists sent the first hijacked airliner into a World Trade Center tower in New York City.

Tucked into speeches about the memories of where people were when they got the news that day; tributes to firefighters and police who were among nearly 3,000 killed in New York City, the Pentagon and at a plane crash site in western Pennsylvania; and vows to never forget, Lafayette Jefferson High School’s Varsity Singers performed and first responders and others placed flowers on a portion of a girder recovered from the World Trade Center site.

Kurt Sinks, a training specialist with Lafayette Police Department, told about going to New York City the day after the attacks to help with rescue and recovery, “because like millions of other Americans, I needed to do something.”

“It remains one of the greatest honors of my life,” Sinks told the crowd, speaking against a backdrop of a U.S. flag hoisted between the ladders of two aerial fire trucks.

“I’ll always remember being handed a hardhat and a shovel,” Sinks said. “I remember the twisted steel, the smoke, the fires and the smells. More than anything, I remember the silence.”

Sinks described how crews would put down their shovels and buckets when a whistle blew, everyone silent while listening for anyone still under the debris.

“Unfortunately, those calls for help never arrived,” Sinks said. “Twenty-five years later, we remember those who gave their lives in the service of others. … They didn’t know that morning what would be asked of them, and none of us know what will be asked of us later today, but when the moment arrives, we will honor the legacy of those who came before us. We will go toward the danger. We will do the work. And we will take care of one another. That is how we honor them, and that is how we never forget.”

A full version of Friday’s ceremony is available here, via the West Lafayette Fire Department’s Facebook page.

Other 9/11 reads …

• Worth rereading is the 9/11 story of 1995 Purdue grad Heather Penney, a fighter pilot stationed at Andrews Air Force Base that morning in 2001. She wound up scrambling as one of two F-16 pilots – along with Marc Sasseville – in search of the hijacked plane that wound up crashing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Purdue had an account in 2021, on the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, of Penney’s story including this passage: “With no time available to arm their F-16s after learning the nation was under attack, the pilots took off from Andrews Air Force Base, fully expecting not to return. If they successfully located the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 — a flight from Newark to San Francisco that had veered back toward Washington, D.C. — they would crash their fighter jets into the rogue Boeing 757-222. Sasseville would ram the cockpit and Penney the tail, preventing the plane from reaching its intended target, reportedly either the White House or U.S. Capitol. ‘When Sass and I took off, we believed that if we were successful that this was a one-way mission, that this was a suicide mission,’ Penney says.” Read the full account here: “Fighter pilot was prepared to sacrifice her life on 9/11.”

• It took more than four hours to read the names of those who lost their lives in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, while cellist Yo-Yo Ma and other musicians performed in the background. This video is via Fox 5 in New York:

• Purdue ROTC members moved their annual 9/11 Memorial Steps of Sacrifice indoors Friday, using the stairs in Mackey Arena from Ross-Ade Stadium. There, ROTC members climbed the equivalent of the number of stairs to the top of the 110-story World Trade Center in 1 hour and 42 minutes – the time between the impact of the first plane and when the second tower collapsed in 2001.

• Mirror Indy reporter Sophie Young had a Q&A with Cathy Weimer, an Indianapolis resident who was among the passengers on a London-to-Indianapolis flight diverted to Newfoundland, Canada, when U.S. airspace shut down on Sept. 11, 2001. The experience of the emergency landing in Gander, Newfoundland, and an extended stay in a nearby town of Gambo as travel came to an immediate stop became the source material for the Broadway show, “Come From Away.” Here’s the story in Mirror Indy: “Five days in Gambo: A Hoosier’s journal takes us inside 9/11 history.” A similar story came two years ago, as Purdue Convocations prepared for a touring production of “Come From Away” at Elliott Hall of Music, based on a firsthand view from Lafayette resident Judi Hawkins, who also was among the 6,700 passengers from dozens of flights who were taken in by Canadian hosts in Gander and in makeshift shelters in schools, community centers and homes in nearby towns in Newfoundland: “A Lafayette story from Broadway’s ‘Come From Away.’”

• I’ve read and re-read this story in Esquire, about photographs of a man falling from the World Trade Centers after airliners hit and before they collapsed, on or around Sept. 11 in the years since it was published in 2021. Horrifying, and in context: “At fifteen seconds after 9:41 a.m., on September 11, 2001, a photographer named Richard Drew took a picture of a man falling through the sky — falling through time as well as through space. The picture went all around the world, and then disappeared, as if we willed it away. One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame — the Falling Man — became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen. Richard Drew’s photograph is all we know of him, and yet all we know of him becomes a measure of what we know of ourselves.” I’m reading it again today: “The Falling Man: An unforgettable story.”

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

INDIANA SUPREME COURT: BALLOTS COUNTY, DEERY WINS SENATE DISTRICT 23 PRIMARY

Six votes for state Sen. Spencer Deery, rejected Aug. 10 by the Indiana Recount Commission in a decision that flipped the results in the Indiana Senate District 23 Republican primary, should have counted despite election official errors, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Less than four hours after hearing oral arguments in Deery’s appeal, the Supreme Court ordered the Recount Commission to recertify results, giving the West Lafayette incumbent a 6,335-6,332 victory over Republican challenger Paula Copenhaver.

The ruling directed election officials in the six counties of Indiana Senate District 23 to resume preparations for the Nov. 3 general election with Deery’s name on ballots.

“I think it’s fantastic news that the court clearly agreed with the idea that your vote shouldn’t be dependent upon government doing its job,” Deery said Thursday afternoon, minutes after the ruling was posted. “And that if you do everything right, your vote should count.”

The ruling did not indicate whether there was a split among the five Supreme Court justices, only that a majority voted in Deery’s favor.

The order posted Thursday afternoon cited a provision in Indiana’s election code – one that had been at the heart of the recount case – that “makes a qualifying ballot countable despite a defect caused by an election officer.” The order signed by Chief Justice Loretta Rush – who left Thursday morning’s hearing saying that the justices would “be discussing this case quickly” – said the court would issue a written opinion “further explaining its reasons.”

But during Thursday morning arguments, justices returned several times to questions about state laws dealing with voter intent in cases when ballots contained clerical errors.

Why, they asked, did the Indiana Recount Commission reject six absentee ballots for missing clerk’s signatures or seals when election law leaves room to favor the voter’s ballot in the face of election workers’ error, as long as there’s no sign of fraud, tampering or misconduct?

“How can you blame the voter here?” Justice Mark Massa asked at one point.

Arguments in a 45-minute session in the Indiana Supreme Court courtroom at the Statehouse focused on how much discretion the Indiana Recount Commission had – and whether it should have used it – to keep the six ballots in play from the May 5 GOP primary.

Deery’s attorneys had argued in briefs filed with the court that absentee ballots of six voters – cast ahead of the May 5 primary, with two each in Warren, Montgomery and Vermillion counties – were tossed by the Recount Commission in error on Aug. 10.

The appeal conceded that four of the 10 ballots rejected by the Recount Commission – two for Deery and two for Copenhaver – because they didn’t include required bipartisan initials by poll workers were dealt with properly under state election law. The law, the Recount Commission had agreed, said ballots without those bipartisan initials must be rejected in a recount.

The six ballots in question were missing a clerk’s signature or seal, two other requirements for absentee ballots.

Deery’s team argued that “the voters’ intent was unmistakable” on those six ballots.

Karen Celestino-Horseman, one of Deery’s attorneys, leaned into Indiana Code 3-12-1-12, a “savings clause” providing that a ballot “may” be counted in cases of election official inaction, “unless evidence of fraud, tampering, or misconduct affecting the integrity of the ballot is presented by a party to the proceeding.”

Bill Bock, an Indianapolis-based attorney representing Copenhaver, argued that absentee ballots couldn’t be considered authentic unless they had all three marks the legislature laid out – including two sets of initials from bipartisan poll workers, a county clerk’s signature and the clerk’s seal.

Justices pressed Celestino-Horseman during Thursday’s oral arguments about whether the word “may” in the election code meant the Indiana Recount Commission was bound to count a ballot that contained a clerical error. Celestino-Horseman argued that it might not in other cases where other problems presented themselves, but for the six ballots in question, where there were no allegations of fraud, the discretion should have fallen in favor of voter intent.

The Indiana Recount Commission had voted 2-1 to reject the ballots, siding with Copenhaver’s strict interpretation of election law despite Democratic member Michael Claytor’s contention that he and fellow commission members, Republican Paul Mullin and Secretary of State Diego Morales, had discretion to abide by clear voter intent when it came to missing clerk’s signatures or clerk’s seals.

Justices pressed Bock and Benjamin Jones, an attorney representing the Recount Commission, on their arguments calling on the court to stick with strict compliance and that voters bore responsibility for knowing what should be on a complete and authentic absentee ballot.

Rush said the legislature had made it clear that absentee ballots that didn’t have the two initials couldn’t be counted. She said the General Assembly could have gone that far on ballots that mistakenly left off the clerk’s seal or signature, but hadn’t.

“What should voters do?” Rush asked Jones. “What should a voter look for to make sure their vote’s going to count for the general election coming up?”

Deery’s side had argued that Indiana Election Division’s Absentee Voter’s Bill of Rights “specifically instructs voters to check their ballots for the required bipartisan initials, warns that a ballot lacking those initials cannot be counted, and directs a voter to request a replacement ballot if the initials are missing.”

Justice Derek Molter noted the Election Division’s document doesn’t tell voters they need to be sure the clerk’s signature and seal are on the ballot. He said that wasn’t necessarily the law, but “it is part of the background consideration for exercising discretion.”

“I read that as pretty clearly saying that you would count these ballots unless there’s fraud, tampering or misconduct,” Molter said during Thursday’s hearing. “So it seems problematic to me that you have the Secretary of State before the election saying, if this scenario were to arise, we will count the ballot. And it’s only after the election, when we know who that’s going to benefit, that that view flips. And then, on the Recount Commission, the Secretary of State says, ‘No, actually, I think we shouldn’t count the ballots.’ So, isn’t that just an inherent problem with the exercise of discretion, where you’re changing the rules, even if they’re not statutory rules, but you’re changing the rules after the election has happened?”

Bock said after Thursday’s ruling that he saw that his arguments weren’t getting the traction expected.

“It appears the majority of the court accepted that these were authentic ballots,” Bock said. “I’ll be interested in what they say on that point, what was persuasive to them about them being authentic ballots.”

Bock said he accepted the ruling as the final decision in the case.

Copenhaver said Thursday afternoon that a statement about the ruling would come later. Earlier, at the Statehouse, Copenhaver said her recount challenge was about following the rules and that Deery’s arguments were “playing on fears and emotions.”

“That your vote’s not going to count – you’re going to be disenfranchised,” Copenhaver said. “We can’t operate on the emotional things. We have rules in place for a purpose and a reason. And we, as a republic, need to educate ourselves in the voting process. … I think there is something that says ignorance of law is no excuse. So voters have a personal responsibility. And again, this is an educational opportunity to learn the process of voting.”

Copenhaver, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump and works in Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s office, was recruited to run against Deery in the midst of his outspoken opposition to the president’s push for a mid-decade redistricting plan aimed as picking up more Republican seats in the U.S. House. Trump allies poured millions of dollars into a campaign targeting Deery.

“I think Paula is very resilient, she has strong moral compass and strong faith, and she offered herself for public service,” Bock said. “That’s not an easy thing to do. I think it was very important, from talking with her, to ensure that she stood by all the people that voted for her and insisted that the process be fully examined, given how close the election was. Now, I think we have our outcome.”

Deery said he hadn’t given up campaigning since May, heading to fairs, parades and community events across a Senate district that includes parts of Tippecanoe and Montgomery counties and all of Fountain, Warren, Parke and Vermillion counties. He said he was looking forward to campaigning for the next seven weeks without the recount hanging over the results.

“I think there definitely is a lot of confusion in terms of, wait, what happened? Did you win? Didn’t you win?” Deery said. “Overwhelmingly, I hear, Wait, I don’t want my vote to be at risk or be dependent on somebody else’s actions if I do everything right.”

Deery will face David Sanders, a Democratic member of the West Lafayette City Council, and independent candidate Joshua Brant for the District 23 seat in the Indiana Senate.

Watch the oral arguments: An Indiana Supreme Court recording of Thursday’s oral arguments are here.

How we got here

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

And now, it’s …

By Tim Brouk / For Based in Lafayette

Dustin Lynch with Dasher the Band, 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10, Loeb Stadium, Lafayette’s Columbian Park — Pop country singer Dustin Lynch’s steady rise to stardom now has him playing stadiums — our own Loeb Stadium will welcome the singer tonight. The 41-year-old Lynch has won numerous awards since hitting the scene with “Cowboys and Angels,” a tune that introduced fans to his strong and sturdy voice while reaching No. 2 on the country charts. Other hits soon followed like the award-winning “Small Town Boy,” “Good Girl,” “Ridin’ Roads” and “Broken Heart Thing.” Lynch is touring in preparation for the release of his seventh album, “Clean Slate,” which is marked for release on Oct. 30. Opening the show will be North Carolina brother-sister duo Dasher the Band. Max and Laela Dasher utilize their Appalachian upbringing within the Blue Ridge Mountains — an epicenter for folk and Americana sounds 100 years ago — as the heart and soul of their music. However, the sound is revved up enough for 2026 audiences. $50-$113. Tickets.

“The Mousetrap,” 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, Sept. 10-12; 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13; 7:30 p.m. Sept. 17-19 and 2:30 p.m. Sept. 19, Civic Theatre of Greater Lafayette, 313 N. Fifth St., Lafayette — Civic Theatre will kick off its 2026-27 main stage season with a classic whodunit — or who did it for you grammarians — from the woman who helped define the term, Agatha Christie. The longest-running play of all time from 1952-today in London, “The Mousetrap” is a classic murder mystery set at the stately Monkswell Manner during, yep, a blizzard where the various nefarious guests can’t leave. Help arrives eventually in the form of Sgt. Trotter (played by Aiden Freeman), for murder is afoot, and everyone is a suspect and potential victim. The classic Christie scenario helped the early 20^th century author sell about 2 billion books worldwide. “The Mousetrap” also stars Micah Davis and Richie Stephan as Mollie and Giles Ralston, respectively, and the show direction and impressive set is by the great John Collier. $20.50-$29.50. Tickets.

East End Block Party, 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11, downtown Lafayette — The annual East End Block Party is a late summer celebration of business and community on the eastern end of Main Street. Every’s Ice Cream, East End Grill, Ripple & Company and Cellar Wine Bistro will have their eats and drinks outside on the closed-off from Main Street (from Ninth to 11^th streets only). Live entertainment will come in the form of Sheeza (6 p.m.) and a rare performance from The Fergus Daly Band (7:30 p.m.).

Sneaker Ball with The Luniz, MAR and Mr. Imperfect, 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11, Rat Pak Venue, 102 N. Third St., Lafayette — A rescheduled event has been turned into a charity event for kicks. Oakland hip-hop vets The Luniz — purveyors of the huge “I Got 5 on It” track from 1995 — were to play downtown Lafayette’s Rat Pak Venue on July 25. The rescheduled show has been rebranded as the Sneaker Ball, a sneaker and clothing drive for Lafayette Transitional Housing Center. Attendees are encouraged to donate new or gently used shoes and any other clothing item while wearing their own best sneakers. Opening the show will be Detroit emcee MAR and Mr. Imperfect. $15 and $30. Tickets.

GermanFest, 2-11 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, downtown Lafayette — Dress in your best dirndls and let out your lederhosen because its GermanFest time again. The annual St. Boniface bash pays tribute to the 19^th century German settlers of early Lafayette and the heritage that continued into the 20^th century. Today, St. Boniface has a strong Latino congregation, which helps create one of the area’s most unique — and well-attended — late summer festivals in Greater Lafayette. You’ll get tacos and bratwurst, salsa and sauerkraut along with live polka music and much beer. Young frauen and manner have a slew of carnival rides, games and other activities to look forward to. $5; children 12 and younger are free.

Tim Brouk is a longtime arts and entertainment reporter. He writes here (almost) weekly, tracking things to do for Based in Lafayette.

BONUS CUTS

• The Music on the Porch series continues with Brent Laidler & The Swing 38 playing from 3-5 p.m. Sunday at the Caretaker’s Cottage in Grand View Cemetery, 1496 N. Salisbury St. in West Lafayette. It’s free.

• The 25^th anniversary of Hands on Transportation, Imagination Station’s up-close-and-personal interactions with construction equipment, police cars, buses, fire trucks and more, will be 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12 at 600 N. Fourth St. in Lafayette. For more information, visit www.imagination-station.org

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

SD23 RECOUNT COMES DOWN TO THIS: ORAL ARGUMENTS THURSDAY AT INDIANA SUPREME COURT

With less than eight weeks until the November general election, the Indiana Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday morning about who should be on Indiana Senate District 23 ballots as the Republican nominee.

In play is an appeal from state Sen. Spencer Deery, a West Lafayette Republican, that the Indiana Recount Commission threw out six ballots in the May 5 Republican primary that should have counted for him – a move that flipped a three-vote victory into a three-vote loss to Paula Copenhaver, a Trump-backed challenger and Fountain County Republican Party chair.

As of now, the final count in the May 5 primary at 6,332-6,329 for Copenhaver.

What’s at stake: Last week, the Indiana Supreme Court ordered election officials in the six counties of Indiana Senate District 23 to hold off on distributing ballots for the Nov. 3 general election until justices decide the appeal centering on six ballots.

Deery’s arguments: In a brief filed Aug. 28, Deery’s attorneys argued that absentee ballots of six voters – cast ahead of the May 5 primary, with two each in Warren, Montgomery and Vermillion counties – were tossed by the Recount Commission in error on Aug. 10. The appeal conceded that four of the 10 ballots rejected by the Recount Commission – two for Deery and two for Copenhaver – because they didn’t include required bipartisan initials by poll workers were dealt with properly under state election law.

The six in question were missing a clerk’s signature or seal, two other requirements for absentee ballots. Deery’s attorneys argued under a provision of election law say those votes may be counted , despite the errors, unless there’s evidence of fraud, tampering or misconduct. Deery’s team argued in its expediated appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court that “the voters’ intent was unmistakable” on those six ballots.

“At no time during the recount hearing before the (Recount) Commission did Copenhaver assert, let alone prove the existence of fraud, tampering or misconduct that impacted the integrity of these six ballots,” Deery’s brief read.

“Her only contention before the Commission was that the clerk failed to perform a mandatory duty,” the brief read. “The plain and ordinary language of (Indiana Code) 3-12-1-12 supports to objective of the Indiana Election Code: to count the votes of qualified voters rather and disenfranchise them because of errors committed by election officials.”

Copenhaver’s arguments: Bill Bock, an Indianapolis-based attorney leading the case to maintain Copenhaver’s three-vote victory certified by the Indiana Recount Commission, disputed Deery’s claims. He argued in a brief to the Indiana Supreme Court, as he had successfully before the Recount Commission, that state election law set standards for absentee ballots for a reason, requiring a set of three specific marks to qualify as legitimate. That included two sets of initials from bipartisan poll workers, a county clerk’s signature and the clerk’s seal. Copenhaver’s side argued that Deery didn’t have evidence that “the absence of the clerk’s signature and seal resulted solely from election officer error.”

“Election integrity and the authenticity of absentee ballots are precisely why the Legislature requires three separate and independent markings by election officials on absentee ballots,” Copenhaver’s attorneys argued. “The clerk’s seal, signature and bipartisan initials are each distinct safeguards designed to verify that a ballot is official and has passed through the procedures prescribed by law. Accordingly, it cannot simply be assumed that absence of these markings was the fault of an election official. A ballot cannot be deemed authentic based on speculation alone.”

Copenhaver – backed by amicus brief from backers at Club for Growth, a conservative group that poured a reported $2 million into GOP primaries aiming to topple incumbents who didn’t back President Donald Trump’s redistricting plan – argued that Deery’s appeal came too late in the game and that the court should allow counties to get back to meeting “carefully calibrated” state deadlines for ballot prep and candidates get back to campaigning ahead of the November election.

Oral arguments: The Indiana Supreme Court will hear arguments in the appeal at 11:15 a.m. Thursday in the courtroom at the Indiana Statehouse.

How to watch: The Indiana Supreme Court will livestream the oral arguments here.

Once it’s settled: The eventual winner of the Republican nomination will face David Sanders, a Democratic member of the West Lafayette City Council, and independent candidate Joshua Brant for the District 23 seat in the Indiana Senate.

About Indiana Senate District 23: The district spreads from West Lafayette to Rockville, covering parts of Tippecanoe and Montgomery counties and all of Fountain, Warren, Vermillion and Parke counties.

How we got here …

THIS AND THAT/OTHER READS …

DATA CENTER REGULATIONS HEARING DELAYED A MONTH: A delay in publishing a legal advertisement will put an Area Plan Commission public hearing on proposed zoning codes for data centers on hold for a month, APC officials said Wednesday. The APC had been scheduled to consider proposed regulations – ones meant to make it as difficult as possible to plant a hyperscale data center in Tippecanoe County – on Sept. 16. That now will get pushed back to 6 p.m. Oct. 21. That meeting will be held at Lafayette City Hall, 20 N. Sixth St. (The usual meeting room at the County Office Building in downtown Lafayette will be taken that day by voting machines ahead of the Nov. 3 general election.) Here’s more on the proposed data center zoning codes and where they stood after a review by the APC Ordinance Committee last week:

TRO FOR TKR: In Trey Kaufman-Renn’s pursuit of another college basketball season after he was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves, Indianapolis Star reporter Nathan Baird had this out of a Clark County courtroom Wednesday: “A Clark County Circuit Court judge Wednesday granted Kaufman-Renn’s temporary restraining order against the NCAA. It allows him to join another college program while awaiting a hearing on a preliminary injunction to play in the coming 2026-27 season.” Here’s more, including why it won’t mean he’ll be back with the Boilermakers: “Kaufman-Renn says farewell, seeks college basketball home after winning TRO vs NCAA.”

Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.

There was plenty to unpack from a pair of city council meetings on either side of the river Tuesday. Here’s some of what went on.

LAFAYETTE CITY COUNCIL

Caterpillar property tax abatement sail through on $980 million project: A pair of 10-year tax abatements for a proposed $980 million in equipment and upgrades Caterpillar is lining up for its Large Engine Center in Lafayette won unanimous approval from the Lafayette City Council.

The plans, spurred by growing demand for the company’s engines and generators for data centers and other uses, include $350 million in renovations and upgrades and another $540 million for manufacturing equipment at the South Street plant that produces diesel and natural gas engines.

The move comes two years after the council approved similar tax abatements for a $725 million expansion and new equipment at the Caterpillar plant.

“I don’t think is probably too hard to sell, so I won’t belabor it too much,” Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski told the city council Tuesday. “But $1.6 billion over a window of a few years is a substantial investment for our community.”

Eric Nieukirk, director of real estate and economic development for Caterpillar, told the council the $890 million project was “in the final considerations of investment.”

According to the paperwork submitted to the city, the project would not add to the 1,995 employees at the Lafayette facility. Nieukirk said the work, including some on equipment installed with the plant opened in 1982, would retain the current staffing levels.

“We appreciate the support that the council and the community have provided to our facility over the years, since year one,” Nieukirk said. “So, as we consider where to invest, we always want to look here at the Lafayette facility going forward.”

The tax breaks approved by the city would cut that real property and personal property taxes on the new equipment and renovations by 100% the first year, 90% the second year and reduce by 10% each of the following years in the next decade.

City claws back part of tax abatement for Fairfield Manufacturing equipment: After equipment was removed from the former Fairfield Manufacturing facility, when parent company Dana Corp. sold the facility to Allison Transmission, the city negotiated a $150,000 repayment of money the company saved in personal property taxes from an abatement approved in 2022.

The city council signed off on that arrangement, which accounted for what the city calculated to be 50% of the savings from the abatement. The rest of the years on the tax abatement offered by the city were wiped off the books, too, according to the agreement. Mayor Tony Roswarski said the original abatement included a memorandum of understanding that allowed the city to recapture some of the tax savings from the first three years of the deal.

“In what could have been a very challenging situation, I feel it ended up as good as we could all possibly ask for,” Roswarski said. “I felt everybody negotiated in good faith. Everybody was trying to do the right things and be reasonable about what they did, and I believe that this number represents that.”

Backyard chickens pass the test in Lafayette: No complaints surfaced Tuesday night about the first year of backyard chickens in Lafayette, just unanimous votes by the city council to continue to allow flocks of up to five hens behind homes in the city.

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COUNTY OK’S NEW LOCAL INCOME TAX, CLARIFIES WHAT IT’S FOR

Tippecanoe County residents will pay another $1 for every $1,000 they make, starting Jan. 1, 2027, based on a new, 0.1% local income tax approved Tuesday by the Tippecanoe County Council.

The money generated by the new tax – expected to be $6.3 million – will go toward correctional facilities costs.

What those expenses will be, specifically, haven’t been set, county officials said Tuesday.

Ahead of a 6-0 vote for the new local income tax, Jody Hamilton, county council president, said prevailing assumptions weren’t accurate that approval of the 0.1% rate meant the county was ready to move ahead on a 24-bed juvenile detention center pursued and then shelved two years ago on county-owned property just south of the Tippecanoe County Jail. (On the unanimous vote, council member John Basham was absent from Tuesday’s meeting, though he joined other council members in favor of the tax in an initial vote in August.)

“A lot of things that I’m reading and when I talk to people, they automatically think this money is automatically going to build a juvenile detention center,” Hamiton said. “I just want to clarify that, yes, that is one possibility that these funds can be used for, but that has not been approved, yet.”

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SK HYNIX REZONING LAWSUITS CHALLENGE BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOVES BEFORE 2025 CITY COUNCIL VOTE

Evidence turned over about a series of behind-the-scenes maneuvers leading up to a West Lafayette City Council’s rezoning vote that cleared the way for SK hynix’s landmark $3.87 billion semiconductor facility – including a closed session where officials from the South Korean company, land owner Purdue Research Foundation and the federal CHIPS Act office met privately with all nine city council members at the height of debate over the site – is enough to justify a trial on a pair of lawsuits challenging the validity of the zoning vote and process, attorneys for three West Lafayette residents argued in court filings last week.

The lawsuits, filed a month after the city council’s 6-3 vote in May 2025, are heading for a bench trial expected to start Dec. 1 in Tippecanoe Circuit Court.

But still hanging out there are unresolved issues after SK hynix, Purdue Research Foundation and the city of West Lafayette asked the court for a summary judgment. They argued in a November 2025 motion that the lawsuits looking to overturn the rezoning – and in effect stop construction of a plant that would assemble high-bandwidth memory – fall short of needing a trial to settle the matter.

In court filings last week, attorneys representing three residents who live roughly a mile from the site north of Kalberer Road argued that evidence turned up in the legal fight shows a lack of effort “to give reasonable regard” to the rezoning process and procedural deficiencies ahead of the city council’s vote that leaves plenty for a trial to sort out.

“(SK hynix, PRF and the city) ask this Court to hold, as a matter of law and without trial, that this was reasonable regard,” Tom Williams, an attorney representing his sister, Lora Williams, in one of the lawsuits challenging the rezoning, argued in one filing last week. “It was no regard at all.”

But of a closed-door meeting with the nine city council members – all Democrats – and a series of smaller, private gatherings in the weeks after the Area Plan Commission had voted 9-5 to recommend denial of rezoning 121 acres from R1/single-family residential uses to I3/heavy industry, an attorney representing the second challenge took it another step in a separate filing last week.

Arie Lipinski, an attorney representing residents Sean Sasser and Karl Janich, argued that “whether those private meetings, considered separately or together, involved receiving information or deliberation on the same public business and whether they met the statutory criteria” were enough to set aside the company’s request for summary judgment. Lipinski argued that evidence of the closed-door meetings could be enough to swing the case and void the rezoning.

“The Court could determine that a trial is not necessary and grant summary judgment in favor of petitioners due to the City Council’s violation of the Open Door Law,” Lipinski argued in a Sept. 1 filing.

As of the weekend, SK hynix, PRF and the city had not responded, according to the case’s online filings.

The parties are scheduled to be back in court Sept. 29 to deal with miscellaneous motions. Judge Sean Persin set aside three days for a bench trial, starting Dec. 1.

As the lawsuits play out, construction is seven months in at SK hynix’s site north of Kalberer Road, between Yeager Road and Salisbury Street/County Road 50 West. Company officials justified breaking ground, pouring footers and making headway on cleanrooms to stay on schedule for an opening slated for late 2028.

At the heart of the lawsuits, each filed in June 2025 and later consolidated and tracking together in Tippecanoe Circuit Court, Williams, Janich and Sasser argue that the city council overstepped its authority, ignoring warnings from local experts about health, environmental and other concerns in its vote to rezone the property. They initially raised questions about improper notice about the rezoning process, a general lack of study or evidence about the potential impacts on the environment and the neighborhoods, and allegations of backroom negotiations between the city and SK hynix that influenced what was a controversial decision. The lawsuits contend the city council should have either accepted a 9-5 vote in March from the Area Plan Commission to recommend denial or sent the matter back to the APC for further review.

In their motion to for summary judgement, SK hynix, PRF and the city disputed questions about open door and procedural violations, due process and conflict of interest claims and accusations that the city council had no rational basis to support its rezoning vote.

Persin already has dealt with portions of that motion, with each side claiming a victory.

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