Clarksville Police impound Exit 0 vehicle with homeless supplies

Aug. 2—Clarksville Police officers on Saturday impounded a vehicle used by the Jeffersonville organization Jesus Cares at Exit 0 as volunteers were taking water to unhoused people.

The driver and owner of the vehicle, Exit 0 founder Paul Stensrud, was given a ticket for expired tags and registration, and the vehicle was towed. Four officers were ultimately present at the scene.

Stensrud said he was traveling from his home in Clarksville to West Maple Lane in Jeffersonville in a repurposed ambulance when he was stopped by Clarksville officer Kevin Conklin on Green Tree Blvd in Clarksville.

Stensrud said he was on his way to gather supplies from Exit 0's building in Jeffersonville to distribute to people on the streets of Jeffersonville, Clarksville and New Albany to help them cope in the heat.

Saturday brought sweltering temperatures for Southern Indiana, reaching the 90s with a peak heat index of nearly 105 degrees. An unhoused man, identified as Dante on Exit 0's Facebook page, died in Clark County July 28. Stensrud said that autopsy results have not yet been released, but he believes the death to have been heat-related, making the outreach he was doing Saturday even more crucial.

Stensrud said he was not aware his tags were expired when he was pulled over and only realized his registration was due for renewal as he was handing it over to Conklin. According to Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles records shared with the News & Tribune by Stensrud, the tag renewals for all six of his vehicles are due in October, with the exception of the impounded vehicle, which had a February due date.

His failure to renew the tags and registration was an honest mistake, Stensrud said.

He said he apologized and offered to renew his registration online immediately and also offered to have his wife pick him up and drive him to the BMV to renew the tags.

But Conklin gave him a $22 traffic citation and insisted on impounding the vehicle, Stensrud said. The vehicle was picked up by Bennett's Towing and Recovery, a Jeffersonville company.

"He basically told me, 'you've already committed a crime, we're impounding your vehicle, you get what you need out of it, and why should we do anything different for you? Why do you feel as though you should get special privileges?'" Stensrud said. "I wasn't asking for special privileges."

Stensrud said he became frustrated because impounding the vehicle meant he could not get it back until Monday since the BMV is closed on weekends, which would have limited the outreach he was trying to make in the extreme heat. He said Conklin told him he would need to go into the police department Monday to pick up some paperwork before police would release his vehicle.

"Why couldn't you just write the ticket and let me go and get it taken care of?" Stensrud said.

He said he was also concerned about the vehicle's safety sitting in the impound lot, since not all doors lock properly and there is a battery system that needs to be turned on to engage the air brakes.

After the vehicle was impounded, Stensrud said he had to scramble to find another way to deliver the supplies, leaving Exit 0 members to use their personal vehicles, which cannot carry as much as the ambulance can.

Stensrud said he believes Saturday's incident was another installment in an ongoing series of set-ups meant to personally target him after his arrest on charges of drug possession in December 2022.

Stensrud said that before he was pulled over, Conklin's car was not directly behind him. There was a car already behind him in front of Conklin, leading Stensrud to believe the stop was planned.

"They already knew ahead of time that they were going to do this," he said. "They knew what we were doing."

Stensrud said Conklin also tried to approach his wife, who came to the scene Saturday, as she was recording the incident on her cell phone. Conklin went over to her car and inspected the license plate, he said.

Conklin also had to be reminded multiple times by the other officers at the scene to activate his body camera, Stensrud said. Indiana law requires local law enforcement to use body cameras and dashboard cameras.

"They are trying to shut us down," he said. "They can't target the outreach because we're under the church, so now they're personally coming after me. It's like, you have an apartment fire and you have the Red Cross come in and they have expired tags, and you're going to tow a vehicle like the Red Cross because of expired tags before they can serve the community that they're there to serve? The more that we do for the community, they're going to try and set us back."

Max Malone, a community activist who sometimes volunteers with Exit 0, said he was frustrated upon hearing of the impoundment.

"It wasn't like they didn't have the funds to cover it, and it wasn't an intentional thing," Malone said. "It seemed like the Clarksville Police Department could've just given them a warning."

Malone said he made phone calls to local government officials and council members after the incident to try to get the vehicle out of the impound lot earlier.

On Sunday, Stensrud said he got a phone call from Bennett's Towing informing him he could pick up the vehicle. The company waived his impound fees, he said, and told him they disagreed with CPD's decision.

CPD Officer Kevin Conklin and representatives from Bennett's Towing could not be reached for comment for this story. CPD Public Information Officer, Detective Corporal John Miller, told the News & Tribune he had no information to provide, deferring to CPD Police Chief Mike Palmer, who could not be reached for comment.

Ken Conklin, communications director for the Town of Clarksville, said Wednesday the Clarksville Police Department told him they had no comment about the incident. However, Conklin said the police department did ask the impound lot to release Stensrud's vehicle early.

"When we learned that the vehicle would be needed to serve the community over the weekend, Clarksville Police worked to make sure it was released from impound, despite the impound lot being closed for the weekend," Conklin said in an email.

Stensrud said that in addition to the $22 traffic citation, he is still facing a $150 towing charge plus the $139 in court costs ahead of his court date in September.

Barb Anderson is the founder of Haven House Services in Jeffersonville, which supports domestic violence survivors and the unhoused community. She said she believes the situation could have been handled differently, and Stensrud's failure to renew the tags was simply a case of human error.

"You have to feel sorry for somebody that has a truck full of stuff for a bunch of poor people and they can't do it," she said.