INDIANAPOLIS — It was 1998, a year after the state capital endured a record 160 homicides amid a crack cocaine invasion so severe that NUVO Newsweekly declared it “the greatest social catastrophe” in the city’s history. The alternative newspaper even named one of the victims — former Marine Johnnie K. Smith — its “Hoosier of the Year,” acknowledging the grim honor as a “dubious distinction.”
Republican Mayor Stephen Goldsmith convened a summit that summer to address the crack epidemic and skyrocketing homicide rate. He responded with saturation patrols and narcotics checkpoints. At each roadblock, one police officer would conduct an open-view examination of the vehicle while another would walk a K-9 dog around the car.
Amid the crackdown, in late September 1998, motorist James Edmond drove his car onto a downtown interstate ramp and right into a narcotics checkpoint. Some 30 officers quickly surrounded him. They had no reasonable suspicion or probable cause…