Committee to push for safer late-night stores

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Updated: February 16, 2012 11:33PM

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A panel of state labor officials and retail groups says they’ll try to have a plan to better protect late-night employees from violent crimes by May.

The effort to make convenience and liquor stores safer is being led by family members of clerks who’d been injured or killed on the job by assailants. The group met Thursday in a public forum on the state government campus in Indianapolis after a closed-door session last month left some family members feeling shut out.

The committee will consider proposals such as hiring more workers for late shifts and installing panic buttons. The stores hope to regulate themselves.

Theresia Whitfield of Indianapolis represents clerks and their families on the committee. She hopes it brings major improvements to employees’ safety.