An off-duty police officer was returning to his home from an early dinner with his three young daughters when, according to police records, he allegedly crashed his SUV into a pole in west suburban Plainfield, fled to his home just yards away and kept cops at bay for four hours as he roamed in and out his house with guns and ammo draped across his body, spurring officers to close streets and warn residents to stay inside as they called in neighboring police, drones, a SWAT team and an armored vehicle to the standoff.

Officer Ryan Harter, who worked at the Downers Grove Police Department about 20 miles away from his home, can be seen drinking and heard slurring his words on police body camera footage of the standoff obtained by the Illinois Answers Project. Police tried but failed to Tase him repeatedly. At one point, Harter allegedly threatened one of his daughters with a pocketknife and also waved a gun at a 68-year-old neighbor.

The standoff ended peacefully, with Harter, 41, surrendering himself unarmed to police on the street in front of his house. So peaceful, in fact, the chief negotiator gave him a long hug and told him he was “not in any trouble.”

“Listen, you’re one of us. You need to understand that,” the crisis negotiator said, according to body camera footage. “We want to protect you,” another officer said. “Everybody here’s your brother, alright?”

Harter, who had repeatedly threatened to end his life, was handcuffed for his own protection and taken to a nearby hospital where he was involuntarily committed.

Throughout the ordeal, police promised Harter he would not be charged with any crimes.

Even Harter didn’t believe it, repeatedly telling cops there was no way that would happen.

“That’s bull—,” Harter said.

But it was true.

Harter wasn’t charged that day, the next or even that week. Plainfield police initially downplayed what happened as “more of a mental health situation.” A police news release about the standoff didn’t mention that Harter was a cop. They closed the case.

It took nearly three weeks before he was eventually charged with four misdemeanors and a petty offense and arrested, after police said they developed new information the day after the standoff. He was charged with aggravated assault with a knife, aggravated assault with a firearm, leaving the scene of a property damage motor vehicle crash, disorderly conduct and failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident.

People who live in the neighborhood criticized the Plainfield Police Department for not charging Harter initially and argued he was getting special treatment. Neighbors who spoke with Illinois Answers described hiding inside for hours that night, and some told police they are terrified of Harter and left their homes to stay in hotels.

Plainfield police strongly reject the allegation Harter got special treatment because he’s a cop. Plainfield Police Cmdr. Anthony Novak said officers “went above and beyond and ultimately saved a life that evening.”

“On the evening of the incident, we did not have any information that a crime had been committed (there were lessons learned and we could have done better sooner),” Novak wrote. “Once we received information alleging that a crime was committed, we did not hesitate to re-open and assign the investigation to our investigations unit. The detective assigned conducted a very thorough investigation, which led to criminal charges being filed against Mr. Harter.”

Still, officers appear to have witnessed much of what happened that night and recorded it on their body cameras. Police knew that night Harter had been in an accident nearby; they had his car towed away. A dispatcher told officers responding to the scene that he was “highly intoxicated and unstable.” Harter told officers during the standoff that he “got pissed” and crashed his car.

“On the evening of the incident, we had insufficient evidence that Mr. Harter was operating the vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs, to perform any field sobriety testing and/or make an arrest for that offense,” Novak wrote to Illinois Answers.

Novak said it would be “very difficult to prove” since four hours had lapsed: “From my understanding, no alcoholic beverages were found inside the vehicle during an inventory search. We did find out later that he had not consumed any alcoholic beverages while at dinner shortly before the crash and had no evidence that he had any alcohol prior to the crash, which leads me to believe the officers made the correct decision based upon the information they had to not pursue any DUI-related charges.”

Downers Grove Police Chief Mike DeVries said his department was made aware of the standoff the same day and immediately placed Harter on leave pending an investigation. The agency secured Harter’s duty weapon and alerted Illinois State Police, which revoked Harter’s Firearm Owner’s Identification (FOID) card the day after the incident, emails show. Harter, who had worked for Downers Grove since 2019, later resigned effective Jan. 18.

Harter and his attorney in the criminal case declined to comment after his initial court appearance on the charges earlier this month. The Will County state’s attorney’s office also declined to comment.

Harter is in the midst of a divorce, and, after the standoff, his estranged wife filed for an order of protection and asked a judge to suspend his parenting time. The filing and her accompanying affidavit in the case shed more light on what led up to the confrontation.

According to the filing, on Nov. 23, Harter took his three daughters — ages 13, 11 and 8 at the time — out to dinner. During the outing, his wife alleges, Harter drove erratically, sped, yelled at other drivers, stopped in numerous parking lots, berated the girls, punched one daughter and threatened two with a pocketknife. (Plainfield police charged Harter with threatening one daughter with a knife.)

The group was returning from dinner when Harter crashed his white Honda CR-V into a light pole on the street behind his home, the filing says, about 4:30 p.m. Witnesses who called 911 said Harter walked away from the scene, with his daughters crying as they tried to stop him. Several callers early on clearly identified him as an officer, and one said he apparently was “drunk.”

Harter and two of the girls then went to their house, where Harter grabbed a gun and told the girls he was “not going to be around tonight,” the filing alleges.

The girls’ mother and an unidentified man who was with her called 911 in a panic, saying one daughter had called them “frantically crying and screaming.” The mother can be heard yelling at her daughters on the phone to “get out of the house!”

When the mother arrived at the house, the girls ran outside to her and then went to a neighbor’s house. Harter then came out of the house, allegedly waving a gun and screaming at his estranged wife, who fled, the filing says.

Multiple agencies — including Plainfield, Will County, Shorewood, Bolingbrook and a Joliet SWAT team — arrived and gathered along the street and at a nearby aquatic center. Officers shut down roads nearby and launched two drones. Residents within 1 mile received an alert to shelter in place.

Over a few hours, Harter periodically went in and out of the house — backyard, front porch, basement — as officers talked with him, records show. He repeatedly made suicidal comments and displayed firearms. “He’s got a rifle on the front porch,” one officer can be heard saying over dispatch. “Shotgun in his hand,” another says.

“I’m drinking,” Harter told one officer, who said he’d met Harter before. When Harter requested some nicotine, the officer tossed him a pouch across the lawn. Harter later approached the officer holding a bottle that he appeared to be drinking from.

That’s when a Will County Sheriff’s deputy ordered Harter to the ground. When Harter began to walk back home, the deputy deployed his Taser at least three times, which struck Harter in the shoulder but failed to stop him, records show. Harter went inside and returned with a shotgun and rounds “slung on his back.”

Just before 6 p.m., Harter “racked the shotgun,” and an armored vehicle approached the front of the house. At 7 p.m., in the midst of the standoff, officers indicated there would be no criminal charges, according to a timestamped police log of events. “Treated as barricaded suicidal subject,” records show.

Over the next hour, Harter spoke with negotiators by phone and face-to-face, periodically reflecting on his own experience in law enforcement. Bodycam videos show Harter stumbling around the property and slurring his words.

“I got pissed, and I f—ing crashed my g— car,” Harter said, according to videos.

“I told you, there’s no charges. You’re not going to jail,” a crisis negotiator told Harter.

Harter eventually walked toward officers and put his hands on the hood of a squad car. The crisis negotiator embraced Harter in a hug lasting about 30 seconds. “You’re not in any trouble,” the crisis negotiator said. “There’s people to help you.”

“I’m totally in a lot of trouble,” Harter responded.

Officers handcuffed Harter, placed him in a gurney and took him in an ambulance to Saint Joseph Medical Center in Joliet. While at the hospital, a sergeant informed the officer monitoring Harter that “there were no criminal charges,” so the officer uncuffed Harter, records show.

Meanwhile, inside the home, officers discovered a taser prong, multiple empty and partially empty alcoholic beverage containers, multiple pocket knives, ammunition, two shotguns, two rifles, a semi-automatic pistol and a revolver. Inside Harter’s car, officers found a black “go bag” containing two AR-15 magazines loaded with 60 rounds, a tourniquet and other medical supplies.

That night, Novak, the police commander, told news outlets the incident was “more of a mental health incident than a criminal investigation.” He said no criminal charges were pending.

Asked about the crisis negotiator who hugged Harter, Joliet police said the embrace “reflected compassion and respect following an extended time of tense conversation,” adding “While physical contact such as this is not always common, every crisis is different.”

Former Riverside Police Chief Tom Weitzel, who has decades in law enforcement experience, said it’s unusual that a standoff would end in a hug. He previously presided over the Northern Illinois Police Alarm System, a collaboration of a hundred area agencies that operates a SWAT team to respond to situations like barricades.

“If it was just a barricade situation and somebody was in there who was not a police officer, to end in a hug would be highly unlikely,” Weitzel said.

Harter was released from the hospital a week after the standoff.

It was not the first time he had been accused of driving under the influence with his kids. In November, Harter allegedly appeared at one of the girls’ cheer competitions “visibly intoxicated,” told people he drove 110 mph to get there and later “passed out,” according to his wife’s court filing. He was “visibly intoxicated” again when he dropped one of the girls off at cheer practice later that month, the filing alleges.

Reached by phone, Harter’s wife declined to comment.

Harter is currently a certified but inactive officer in Illinois, according to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board. Any administrative proceedings against Harter would not begin until his criminal case has concluded.

The 2021 SAFE-T Act changed the way Illinois decertifies police officers. The law expanded the type of conduct that triggers automatic decertification and created a process for discretionary decertification.

Illinois automatically decertified 33 officers in 2022, 21 in 2023, and 14 in 2024, according to ILETSB annual reports. No officers were decertified under the discretionary process during that time. Data for 2025 was not available.