Man threatened to kill Indy officers’ families, police say
Vic Ryckaert and Madeline Buckley, 6:43 p.m. EDT July 12, 2016
Six years ago, March E. Ratney was arrested after neighborhood residents told police he was riding a bike and firing a gun. When officers responded to the 911 calls, court documents say, Ratney called them pigs. He called one officer a “cracker.” The documents say he threatened to go to the officers’ homes and kill their families.
Ratney, 27, is now accused of trying to carry out a similar threat.
Ratney’s words from 2010 echo eerily now after police say he went to the home of an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officer early Tuesday and fired more than a dozen shots at the officer’s home and police car.
The officer, a 10-year veteran of the force, was relaxing in his home around 2:25 a.m. after a night shift when a bullet whizzed near the window, police said. His wife and child were sleeping in the home. The family is unharmed, though the officer is concerned for his wife and child, IMPD Chief Troy Riggs said. …
Riggs said Ratney wore a T-shirt that, on the front, had the words, “F — the police.” On the back, he said, the shirt read, “Black Lives Matter,” a social justice movement that protests police shooting deaths of black men.