2 Men Arrested for Impersonating Police Officers in Elkhart

by Ed Ernstes (ernstes@wsbt.com)

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Elkhart Police have arrested two men for impersonating officers in two different cases. David Johnson, 22, is behind bars along with a juvenile.

By Beth Boehne

(WSBT) Elkhart Police have arrested two men for impersonating officers in two different cases.

David Johnson, 22, is behind bars along with a juvenile.

Police want to know if there are other cases they don't know about.

"Yeah, it’s very scary, it’s very scary,” said Samantha Hibshman.

Hibshman was a victim in one of the two recent incidents. On Saturday evening, September 29, she was with four other friends at a shopping center on the city's north side.

”We're standing outside talking and this green SUV pulls up, says they were security patrol, in an unmarked car, but they had the guns, the radios, the computer, all that kind of stuff,” Hibshman said.

The two alleged officers said they were on patrol checking for loitering and vandalism problems.

She says she became a little suspicious early on when only two of the five people in her vehicle, including herself, were asked to produce some form of identification.

“And they asked for our IDs. The guy then walked around the car, got in, said he was putting the information into the computer. We saw him write down information, never put it in the computer. [He] came back, said we were OK, free to go,” Hibshman explained. “However when they sped out the other end of the parking lot, that's when we knew something wasn't right."

The other incident took place on Friday evening on October 5, at McNaughton Park with a similar vehicle and method.

The real police pulled up on a traffic stop involving a green car with flashing blue lights that was sitting behind a car.

"Those subjects were wearing a modified-looking police uniform, they had on duty belts,” Detective Steve Price of the Elkhart Police Department. “One of the subjects was wearing a shirt that said police on the back, and it had a police badge on the front."

In addition to the car, police confiscated six realistic looking toy guns and knives, a computer and other equipment used by real officers.

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