v, here is a copy of a prior post from me.
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.
