SHOULD POLICE AUTO CHASES BE CURTAILED?

Actually - not be nitpicking, but I will (partially because I am anal). But when I stated you stretched the truth, I was referring more to your statement that



Huge difference between weaving in and out of traffic on a highway while speeding and "...driving relatively slowly in a commercial area of a city." Driving at a high speed and weaving in and out of traffic is endangering others and thus give cause to try to stop the individuals. I can understand not remembering the exact number of teenagers especially once you reach that high of a number. But also when also declared nine teenagers you also said - "count them" which would insinuate that you did know the exact number.

Right, you are a nitpicker.

I think the cop, worried about his liability in the case, lied. I think the weaving, etc., started with the police chase. I doubt there was any bad driving until the chase.

I remember when the event occurred, being impressed with the carnage (number of kids killed). I honestly remember nine kids, and am a bit suspicious of the number in the articles you furnished. Note that the event occurred over 2 1/1 years ago.

Again, all this begs the issue of the horrific results of so many chases. Incidentally, Courttv tonight will have a show on chases (which I haven't seen). I wager that it will show that many of the chases were for relatively trivial reasons.

I tend to agree with the articles I posted. This was just a small amount compared to how many I actually found - including several chats about this - including the NASCAR chat. They all had the same number of passengers. They all stated that the car was already driving at a high rate of speed and weaving between traffic on a highway. Even if the police officer did lie (which is definitely a possibility), there were many many witnesses as opposed to your statement - they were driving in a highly trafficked area. If the police officer lied, at least one of these several witnesses would had voiced otherwise. I have seen many news reports where witnesses come forward in these situations so police officers do not "get away" with such lies.

So basically we have two opposing viewpoints - one a single person on A2K declaring they remember from 2 ½ years ago precisely the number of teenagers in this incident and assumes that the police officer lied and several articles and other chat rooms that all state there were 7 (not that the number matters because either way it is too many teens being killed) and all state that the car was driving to dangerously fast and weaving with many other witnesses than the one police officer and no one refuting that statement.

Sorry but I sort of have to side with the several reports to be a little more accurate. I tend to think that you may twist things a bit to fit your arguments. You would be better served to stick to the facts - many people would still agree that high speed chases are not a good thing even in the circumstances where the driver has done something wrong (like driving dangerously). He would definitely have much more credence in your arguments if you did stick to facts rather than assumptions.

You need to go back and read the article to which you linked. It does not say that there was speeding before the chase. The cop said the car was driving erratically -- he was not about to admit that there was no valid reason for the chase that killed a bunch of little kids.

Indeed, after 2 1/2 years, I may have forgotten the number of kids. Big deal!!!!!

But what is your take on the basic issue. Do you think that chases should be curtailed, and why?

Link, were you exaggerating when you said the kids were speeding before the chase? Or perhaps you forget what was said in the piece to which you linked a only a couple of days ago.

Were you exaggerating when you said that I attacked the lawyer who wrote the piece you produced, or did you just forget what I said. (I merely doubted his objectivity.)

In contrast to you, I was writing about something I read 2 1/2 years ago.

I already stated how I feel about high speed chases. I did misread the articles as one witness stated they passed at 80 mph. I misunderstood. However, whether the driver was weaving or speeding if it appears suspicous they can pull some one over and should. Like I stated before they did that to us with 5 people in the car (and not speeding or weaving).

This does not mean the police officer did anything wrong by trying to pull some one over or that he lied about it and without any evidence to the contrary you cannot make such an assumption. (i.e. see your jury issues). Also, they were not driving on a deserted area of some side road as you insinuated.

If you assume that the police lied, because you feel he is saving his butt, then you should also assume these teenagers were driving dangerously as their history would tell you. They "borrowed" the car, they had prior records (from at least one of the articles I read). Seems as much to support such an assumption as the other (if not more so).

And the only reason I replied to this was that you seemed so adamant to "beat up" and disbelieve the police and side with teens that were obviously out for trouble. Teens taking a car without permission are not behaving appropriately. Although I don't believe in high speed chases - it is not the police's fault this happened - it is the drivers. Yes, the police should make better judgments, but they did not commit a crime - not stopping for the police is against the law.

Interestingly, I am supposed to remember things accurately from 2.5 years ago, and you can't remember something from a couple of days ago.

I never said that the chase started in a deserted area of a side road. If you go back, you will see where I said that it started in a commercial area in or nearby a city. Also, I didn't assume that the cop lied. I do suspect that he did.

Also, I said, and you ignored, that the feeling among authorities was that the kids "rented" the car from a shady individual. This is relatively common in the area. Who said they borrowed the car?

Also, the witnesses you mentioned were to people who saw the chase, not the start of the chase. Were you purposely exaggerating, or just had another failure of memory.

I might mention that there were boys and girls in the car. I think it is sick that they were driven to their deaths for the crime of allegedly driving erratically.

Keep in mind, next time the innocent casualty maybe you or one of yours.

I believe the father of one of the dead boys said the group had been "borrowing" cars for joy riding.

"Joy riding" is usually not sedate driving.

Set, here are some stats that will just kill you. Please note that there is injury or death in one of five chases, and property damage in one of three chases.


Are police chases worth dying for?
Restrictions would give suspects a green light to flee, many officers say. But 86 Indiana deaths in 11 years have spurred calls for stricter policies.
Multimedia


By Eunice Trotter, Tom Spalding and Mark Nichols
[email protected]
Originally published May 22, 2005

As they drove to a Chinese buffet dinner on a rainy Saturday evening, 27-year-old Tameka Anthony leaned over from the passenger seat in her fiance's car and pecked Luther Page on the lips. "I love you," she said.




In the path of a police chase: Tameka Anthony and her son, Charles Griffin Jr., were in this car, on their way to a restaurant for dinner in April 2002, when a motorist fleeing police smashed into them at 80 mph. Both were killed. Fire personnel worked to free a person trapped. - Matt Kryger / The Star 2002 file photo

Moments later, as the couple and Anthony's 9-year-old son were turning left into the parking lot from Arlington Avenue, their lives collided with an 80 mph police pursuit of a suspect fleeing a traffic stop that evening in 2002.
The intoxicated driver smashed into the passenger side of the couple's car. Anthony and her son were killed. Page is permanently disabled.
Across Indiana and the nation, people like Anthony and her son have died when their paths have crossed a police chase that had nothing to do with them.
They are people like 7-month-old Nathanael Bublitz, who wouldn't stop crying as the family headed home from late-night church services in 1997. His 28-year-old mother, Rebekah, unbuckled her seat belt to pull him into her lap from his car seat as the family drove on I-465, her husband at the wheel. A man fleeing police at 100 mph weaved to avoid a tire deflation device and slammed into the Bublitz van. Mother and infant were propelled through the windshield. The baby died instantly; the mother, eight days later.
And they are like Marian W. Woempner, 78, who was driving to church with her husband, Robert, 82, last October. An Indianapolis Housing Agency police car, joining a chase as it was ending, sped through a red light at Emerson and Edgewood avenues and hit the Woempners' car, killing the woman.
An analysis by The Indianapolis Star of 947 police pursuits in Indiana from 2003 and 2004 shows police are virtually unrestricted when they chase suspects. They pursue fleeing vehicles at high speeds and usually for traffic infractions, according to The Star's examination of reports from the Indianapolis Police Department, the Marion County Sheriff's Department and the Indiana State Police.
At least 86 people -- bystanders, suspects and law enforcement officers -- died as the result of police pursuits in Indiana from 1993 through 2003, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Twenty-five of them were bystanders not involved in the chase. Nationally, 3,877 were killed during the same period, 1,251 of them not a part of the pursuit.
Reports of the 947 chases analyzed by The Star show that police:
• Initiated pursuits that ended with at least one injury or death in one of five cases. A third of the chases resulted in property damage.
• Chased motorists at speeds ranging from 10 to more than 170 mph. IPD averaged 57 mph, the Sheriff's Department 64 mph and State Police 88 mph. State Police in August 2003 chased a motorcyclist for 11 miles on I-69 near Fort Wayne at speeds of more than 170 mph. Fort Wayne police joined in, but the suspect got away.
• Often were chasing for relatively minor infractions. Almost three out of four chases were prompted by a traffic violation -- mostly speeding, expired plates or erratic driving -- or a "suspicious" vehicle or occupant. In the first three months of this year, IPD reported 66 chases. Eight out of 10 stemmed from traffic violations.
In several states, police departments have severely restricted chasing suspects to only the most serious offenses. Under a year-old regulation, police in Orlando, Fla., must turn off their lights and sirens, stop their vehicles and turn around when motorists don't stop. Police departments in Baltimore, Columbus, Ohio, and Memphis, Tenn., also have curtailed police pursuits.
"High-speed vehicle pursuits are possibly the most dangerous of all police activities," according to a Philadelphia Police Department policy that limits chases.
Police agencies in Central Indiana say they need to be able to chase anyone they choose under any conditions.
"As a department, we're not going to allow people to believe we're not going to chase them," said Marion County Sheriff's Col. Kerry J. Forestal. He said deputies should continue to pursue vehicles that don't stop, even for minor traffic violations.
"This department is not ready to not chase someone because it's (a) traffic (violation). . . .Yes, they ran the red light, but did they hit and kill somebody before they ran the light? We need to stop them and find out what they're fleeing for."
To Indiana State Police Deputy Superintendent Danny East, "fleeing is a clue." The person running might have committed other crimes.
"The traffic stops our people make have produced (evidence of) criminal activity," East said. "And we know that when we do pull somebody over on a traffic violation and they start to flee, that heightens our awareness there is probably suspected criminal activity."
Forestal said deputies do not want to chase. "But if (a suspect) is running, we can't assume the only violation is the broken taillight. There could be someone in the trunk."
But usually there is no serious crime.
In only a handful of 947 cases -- about 3 percent -- did the suspect face criminal charges for violent felonies after the chase, according to The Star's analysis. Nearly a third of those stopped faced traffic-related charges, while the most frequent charge was resisting arrest, which grew out of the chase itself.
However, police say they do discover felonies as a result of otherwise routine stops and pursuits.
IPD Chief Michael T. Spears, whose department conducted an average of four chases a week during the two-year period reviewed, recalled police chasing a stolen-vehicle suspect in 2002. When the van finally was stopped after going the wrong way on I-70 and running over a tire-deflation device, police found a friend of the suspect's shot in the head and dead in the back, according to reports at the time. In a 1998 case, police chased a suspect on the Westside of Indianapolis into Speedway after he carjacked a woman and her three children.
Blaming police

Page, who lost his fiancee a few months before they were to be married, said he blames IPD and 19-year-old Nathanial Williams, who was drunk and running from a traffic stop. He also lost his fiancee's son, 9-year-old Charles Griffin Jr.
Williams now is serving a 20-year prison sentence for drunken driving, fleeing police and causing the deaths.
"My argument is, if police had never chased him, he would not have hit my car, and my family would still be alive," Page said. "I often think I would have been married by now. My life would have been different."
Page sued Williams and won a $1.3 million judgment. But he doubts he will ever collect. Williams had no car insurance. Page probably would not have won a suit against the Police Department because police have immunity under state law that says they cannot be held liable for properly doing their job.

here's what happened in my city this week....



Rest of the story here...

ff, thanks for the example of another tragic result of a police auto chase. In my area (Charlotte, NC, USA), hardly two weeks go by without some tradgedy because of a police chase. Moreover, the chase is very often related to a traffic offence or something else relatively minor.

I was pleased to see my local paper finally take a position on abusive police auto chases. The risk-benefit ratio must be given very careful consideration before commencing these chases.


High-speed danger
Mint Hill police chase through Charlotte deserves review
Law enforcement experts are clear about basic police chase policy: Initiate pursuit if a suspect is involved in a felony, and have a supervisor monitor the chase.

Others would go one step further and require that the crime should pose serious danger -- or be a violent crime -- before a police chase is initiated.

We agree. And given those criteria, a recent car chase into Charlotte by Mint Hill police that left a motorist injured deserves a serious review by that department, at the very least.

The chase began when a Mint Hill police officer saw a pickup pull into a subdivision where break-ins had occurred and discovered the vehicle was reported stolen. The driver fled, nearly backing over an officer, police said. Police chased the driver through Charlotte at speeds that reached 115 miles per hour. During that pursuit, the suspect's vehicle struck a Charlotte woman's minivan, spinning it into the path of a city bus. She has a cut, a black eye and a cervical strain.

Mint Hill Police Chief Brian Barnhardt calls the chase good police work. It ended with a suspect in custody. Yet while Charlotte police offered a helicopter, they declined to participate in the car chase. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department requires the alleged crime pose serious danger before beginning a chase, and this chase did not fit with that more stringent policy.

It all boils down to this: When does the risk of letting suspects flee from police outweigh the danger to innocent bystanders of high-speed pursuits? And when does chasing someone who may have committed a crime escalate the situation, putting the police, suspect and sometimes the public in harm's way?

The fact that the Charlotte woman in the minivan was not killed was due to her good fortune, not good police work. Mint Hill should reconsider the potential costs and benefits of its chase policy. Other cities and towns, too, should use this near-miss -- as well the circumstances of a fatal police chase this week in Gaston County -- as an opportunity to do the same thing.
--Charlotte Observer

jerk1. ( P ) Pronunciation Key (jûrk)
v. jerked, jerk·ing, jerks
v. tr.
To give a sudden quick thrust, push, pull, or twist to.
To throw or toss with a quick abrupt motion.
To utter abruptly or sharply: jerked out the answer.
To make and serve (ice-cream sodas, for example) at a soda fountain.
Sports. To press (a weight) overhead from shoulder height in a quick motion.

n.
A sudden abrupt motion, such as a yank

Motion n.
noun
1. a natural event that involves a change in the position or location of something. ie bowel motion (****)

I don't see the relevance. Are you describing yourself?

here's another great exmaple of another bad police chace in my city....

2 weeks ago a couple of my friends had taken a new rider out on a group ride. they were on their way home when the new rider bgan to fall behind a bit. my friends passed a police car going in the opposite direction, and when the new rider hadn't caught up to them by the next corner, they waited thinking that she'd been pulled over.

10 minutes later a rider went back to see what was going on....

the Police car had decided to go after my friends (8 of them - all riding at the speed limit!!!!) and had done a u-turn in the middle of the road (over double lines) just across the summit of a hill.... and just as this new rider was coming over the hill.

result........ new rider is now a NO rider, having 2 pins put in her leg, and both the police car and the bike are a write-off!!!!

the police still haven't given a reason as to why they decided to pursue the other 8 riders, and why they did an illegal u-turn on a blind summit to do so!!!

case pending...........

ff, thanks for another example of a police-chase atrocity. I hope that a good civil lawsuit ensues.

A letter to the editor today in my local paper speaks to a recent chase of a speeder that resulted in the death of a bystander. The chase took place in a busy area of a nearby town.

It seems so mindless.

Some of the complexities over the issue of whether Police should chase or not:

If a speed limit is set on police pursuits, then it is pretty much known fact (because of number of jurisdictions have tried this) that criminals accelerate as fast as they can to that pursuit limit, in order to get away. The heavy acceleration creates dangers in and of itself, but the fact that criminals can get away simply by speeding actually increases the number of people running from police at high speeds, thereby propogating the very thing you are trying to avoid.

It's also known (and common sense will tell you), if police don't pursue, then criminals just run all the time. The end result is a surge in violence, and a lack of apprehension of offenders.

People who run from minor traffic offences, will often (not always) have stolen gear in their vehicle, or the vehicle with be stolen, or the driver will be high on drugs, or wanted, etc etc etc).

When someone says 'it shouldn't be a capital offense' to be involved in a pursuit, you are quite right. What isn't said is that whenever someone runs from police, they are wilfully, and of their own accord, engaging in a behaviour for which they have little skill - a behaviour that can kill themselves, or others. The behaviour is the moral (if not legal) equivalent of attempted murder, for if they do kill (and as most admit, there is a definite risk of doing so), it becomes murder (in some places).

What is further left out is, these people are responsible for their own actions. If they don't run, they can't even scratch themselves. Any other argument other than people being responsible for their own actions is like a man who beats his wife senseless saying 'she made me do it', don't you agree?

Remember, police never initiate a pursuit - this is always started by someone else (despite what the media say). Police never continue a pursuit - it is always continued by someone else...for if they stop running, there is no pursuit. What police do do, is follow the offender...and this is called a police pursuit.

Blaming police for another persons actions is the sign of a society that has little sense of self responsibility.

What should always be looked at, is ways to end police pursuits before they began (which can be done in certain circumstances with the right equipment), or ending them quicker (which again requires the right equipment and training).

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Here are my responses.

The curtailing of police pursuits occurs because of political pressure. Political correctness is by no means a reflection of the truth (or otherwise) of what I said.


Quite true.


Only a very small percentage of pursuits lead to death. A large percentage lead to injury and property damage - a consequence of how nearly all pursuits are normally ended.


Not what I was talking about at all. I was referring to the seriousness of the offence committed for anyone that wishes to initiate a pursuit with the police. Capital Offence, Jail time, does not, never has, and never will deter people who are thinking in the moment and of a nature to run.



I presume you are excusing cases where the driver is wanted for murder, armed robbery, rape etc?



Interesting concept, for who is to decide what is reasonable? And how does a police officer decide reasonableness during a pursuit? An armed robber running from police may be driving quite skilfully in light traffic, round a corner, and suddenly lose control and kill themselves or some innocent bystander. The pursuit would be considered reasonable by most people, right up until the last moment of the pursuit.


It's not utopian. There have been numerous trials over decades looking at ways to stop cars without initiating a pursuit, or to end the pursuit early, but the costs involved in doing so are currently prohibitive. Eg, many cars (with electronic accelerators etc) can be disabled by a high blast of electricity, some car companies are installing cars with remote kill switches, tyre deflation devices exist. Tyre deflation devises are the cheapest, but usually an ineffective option. There are probably other inventive devises out there.

Other police organisations use helicopters with video, infared and nightvision to track the vehicles/offenders - which helps alleviate the need for a high speed pursuit - helicopters are incredibly expensive to run.

I guess that reasonable people may disagree, and leave it at that.

However, I will address one thing. You question how an officer would know his pursuit is unreasonable, etc. This would be easy when the jurisdiction has clear standards for auto chases. For instance, a nearby county requires an officer to secure permission from a supervisor before beginning a chase. (I think the supervisor would veto a chase when the alleged offense is relatively minor (e.g., a traffic offense, mud on the license plate, etc.).