Racially charged South Bend Police tape case still casting shadow on community as trial date approaches

A final pretrial hearing was held on Friday, during which we learned that attorneys will rely mostly on preexisting documents rather than live witnesses during the bench trial.

The racially charged case has been casting a dark shadow over the community for more than a decade now.  We still don't know what's on those tapes, but it was concerning enough for the communications director at the time, Karen DePaepe, to report what she accidentally heard on one officer's phone line.

"I knew that I would be persecuted if I even brought this forth, and so I struggled with it," said DePaepe in an April 2012 interview with ABC57. "Do I keep my mouth shut and just let it go? I just felt that many, many individuals would be affected if I didn't."

DePaepe was fired from her position at the South Bend Police Department in March of 2012.

In 2011, while troubleshooting a problem, DePaepe said she came across recordings of phone calls that she believed included "racist, unethical, and even illegal" comments between leaders of the department. DePaepe shared her concerns with Darryl Boykins, the police chief at the time and the first black man to hold that position.

The recordings didn’t stop after that, and conversations continued to be captured.

Boykins was later demoted and ousted as chief.

"The reason I demoted the chief was that I found out that he was the subject of a criminal investigation not from him but from the FBI; and it made it very hard to trust him as one of my appointees," said then-South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg during a 2019 Live CNN town hall meeting.

The big questions: Were the recordings made legally, and can they be released to the public?

A federal court eventually ruled that tapes made before DePaepe's discovery in February 2011 did not violate federal wiretap law, while anything after that did.

The Indiana Supreme Court declined to hear the case in January 2023, sending it back to St. Joseph County, where the long-running legal battle continued, with the bench trial postponed multiple times.

Former Police Chief Darryl Boykins died in late 2024.

As of now, the bend trial is still set to start on December 9, 2025. Superior Court Judge Jamie Woods stated he will have rulings on all matters by March 27, 2026.