Entire police force for Indiana town resigns after council allegedly asks them to do 'illegal and immoral' things

Five members of the force resigned leaving county sheriffs to look over the 800 population town (WTTV)

A small town in Indiana is without their police force after every officer went on strike, claiming they were disciplined for pulling over town officials in traffic stops, and were allegedly pressured to perform “illegal, unethical, and immoral things” by the local council.

“We can’t make this up,” former Bunker Hill marshal Michael Thomison said. “They were just not receptive to having a police department.”

Mr Thomison told BuzzFeed News that council-members requested background checks on their rivals who also served on the council. He added that they had asked for unfettered access to police records.

Officers on the force also claimed to have been punished after pulling over and writing tickets for town council members.

The Bunker Hill Police Department was made up of Mr Thomison and four reserve deputies – the latter of whom were not paid for their work – to cover the town with a population of 800. Mr Thomison had served as town marshal for four years before this week’s resignation.

The marshal and four deputies served their resignation letters during the regular meeting of the town board on Monday.

“We have had issues with the town board and there are some activities there where I felt like they were serving their own agenda,” Mr Thomison told WTTV. “They would not communicate with us or the officers and they kept scaling back.”

In a statement responding to the accusations, the town council “absolutely denies” the accusations from police department, and they say they never asked Mr Thomison or the deputies “to be involved in any illegal, unethical, or immoral actions”.

Miami County Sheriff’s deputies will patrol the town while the town council seeks a new marshal to replace Mr Thomison.

While protesting against alleged unethical requests from the town council, Mr Thomison added that he had a personal stake in resignation following his fight with cancer last year.

According to Mr Thomison, the council scaled back his hours to part-time after he took leave to treat the illness – which affected his health insurance plan.

“They came at me and said it is costing the town way too much money because of my insurance, and they said, ‘We are taking you down to part-time’,” he said.

The deputies said they did not want to quit, but felt the circumstances had reached such a critical level that they had no choice.

“None of us wanted to quit,” former reserve officer Joshua Graham told BuzzFeed. “They just basically did whatever they wanted to do, whether it’s by the law or not.