Indiana
Marion County's Center Township constable charged with 5 crimes
GREENFIELD, Ind. (WISH) — The constable for Marion County’s Center Township has been charged with five crimes in two cases, a special prosecutor in Hancock County announced Tuesday night.
Hancock County Prosecutor Brent Eaton was appointed as special prosecutor in August, and he has worked with Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on the investigation.
In the separate Marion County cases filed by the special prosecutor, Denise Paul Hatch, 64, was charged with two felonies of official misconduct; a felony of attempted assisting a criminal; and misdemeanors of theft, and attempting resisting law enforcement.
Court documents say, in one case, Hatch in October tried to free a man who IMPD officers had placed into a police car. The man was wanted for criminal charges including unlawful carrying of a handgun.
In the other case, court documents say Hatch in August at a grocery had “wanted to exchange a bag of rotten produce with a new bag of similar items that she had just bagged from the Kroger produce section,” a store manager told an investigator.
The bag smelled horrible and had insects come from it, the manager told Hatch, explaining the produce she wanted to return was obviously weeks old. She then exited the store and set off an alarm, where she was approached by a Washington Township constable working as a security officer at the grocery. At one point during the encounter, caught on a bodycam, she told them they “could lock her up” if they wanted.
Hatch was charged on Feb. 8 in Marion Superior Court 18, Criminal Division. Court documents in the case were unsealed Tuesday. Online records showed her in the Marion County jail on Tuesday night. Her initial court appearance is scheduled for Wednesday.
Democrats elected Hatch in the May 2002 primary, and she ran unopposed in the November 2022 election, according to BallotPedia. She received nearly half the vote in the May 2022 primary.
In Indiana, township constables act as bailiffs of township courts, with duties of serving judicial orders and keeping the peace.