Police Chases: Controversy and Adrenaline

Every year in the United States there are thousands of high speed police pursuits that take place.  In the course of my internship I have been involved in a high speed pursuit with the department in which I work in. The pursuit which I witnessed ended well, the suspect was detained, and no one was injured. However hundreds of pursuits end up in bodily injury or fatalities every year. This topic has become a highly debated one since the writing of a number of studies that indicate that fatalities are common in high-speed pursuits. It is very important to study and understand this police procedure because many people killed in these chases are innocent bystanders. The safety of American streets is affected by police pursuits therefore it is necessary to develop alternative methods of stopping criminals in automobiles.

The NHTSA reports that about three hundred people die each year as a result of crashes related to police pursuits. Around a hundred of these are innocent people, pedestrians or drivers uninvolved in the chase. These official statistics are thought to be understated because only ninety percent of police departments report pursuits to the NHTSA, and many times the departments record crashes separate of the pursuit itself, making it practically impossible to know the correct number of pursuit-caused crashes. One thing is certain though, on average a person dies every day as a result of a police chase (FBI Bulletin, 1). These grim statistics paint the picture of a car chase: a patrol car tries to pull over a suspect for a traffic violation; the suspect attempts to flee, the police give chase, and the suspect crashes at high speed or surrenders. According to Pursuit Watch, an organization that monitors police chases, 40 percent of those pursuits end in a crash (Pursuit Watch, 1). Most crashes occur fast: fifty percent of collisions occur in the first two minutes of a pursuit, and seventy percent occur in the first six minutes (National Institute of Justice, 1).

The causes of the crashes are the high speeds involved and the recklessness of the participants in the pursuits. Many times the parties involved develop “tunnel vision”, a phenomenon where the person only sees the road in front of him and overlooks everything else. The suspects only focus on fleeing and many times the police officers only focus on catching the suspects, overlooking the safety of the public. A study shows that seventy percent of the fleeing suspects declared that they would have slowed down or stopped if the police would have stopped pursuing or backed down (FBI Bulletin, 3). Plus, only around seventy percent of the suspects chased are serious felony offenders. The rest of eighty percent are just traffic violators or misdemeanor offenders (Norse and O’Connor, 512). This raises the question of whether or not there is sufficient basis to start a dangerous high-speed pursuit, and whether or not the police officers know when to back down and put the public safety first in their field of priorities.

There are many methods of reducing police pursuits or at least in taking some of the danger out of them. Most people agree that a total banning of police pursuits would lead to an increase in crime, and in the confidence of criminals. Most police departments have policies on pursuits, and most critics argue that these policies should either be reformed or that more care should be taken in putting the policies into practice. More training is needed for patrol officers to know when to stop a pursuit, and/or back down from it. Modern technology allows the police to follow a suspect from a distance, either through a helicopter, or through patrol cars. Studies show that the suspects would then slow down and pose a lower risk to the public, while the police would be able to apprehend the suspect once he/she is in a safe location. Other devices in development would allow patrol cars to disable a fleeing vehicle safely and fast, in the first seconds of a pursuit, through an electromagnetic pulse that would incapacitate the vehicle’s electric system. Other such systems use microwave blasts or radio technology to stop a suspect’s vehicle. Another tool that is successfully in use today is the spike strip, a strip of spikes placed along the road, in the suspect’s path, that disables the tires of the car. This tool is not a hundred percent efficient though because many suspects choose to drive on their bare rims, and keep driving for hours, sometimes.

The police department where I interned is an example of an organization that discourages police pursuits. In the general regulations manual there is a section that covers this topic and that clearly outlines that pursuits cannot be initiated and continued unless the suspect that is pursued is wanted for a serious felony (murder, rape, etc.) or represents a serious danger to the life of other individuals. This organization therefore has very few pursuits every year, and the ones that are initiated are carefully monitored by supervisors in real time. This is an example of a type of policy that can be successful in reducing the number of deaths and injuries related to police pursuits.

Police chases are increasing in number every year and with thousands occurring everywhere in the nation, it is very likely that we are going to come across one of these very dangerous incidents. Many of these pursuits end in collisions that put the lives of many people at risks and that make the roadways unsafe for everybody. The risks of these events and the danger they pose could be eliminated or drastically reduced by reforming the policies of the police departments and by training officers to back down or use technology to stop the pursuits fast and safely.

References

Hill, John. 2002. “High-speed police pursuits: dangers, dynamics, and risk reduction.” The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_7_71/ai_89973554

National Institute of Justice. 1998. Pursuit Management Task Force’s Report on Police Pursuit Practices and the Role of Technology. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/fs000225.pdf

Norse, William L. Jr., and O’Connor, Patrick, T. 2006. “Police Pursuits: A Comprehensive Look at the Broad Spectrum of Police Pursuit Liability and Law“. Mercer Law Review. Macon, GA: Mercer University. 2006: pg 11- 48. Hein Online. http://heinonline.org.proxy-remote.galib.uga.edu:2048/HOL/Print?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/mercer57&id=521

Pursuit Watch. 2008. Pursuit Watch Media Kit. Orlando, FL: Pursuit Watch. http://pursuitwatch.org/media.htm

Rivara, Frederick. 2004. “Study examines crash fatalities from police pursuits.” University of Washington School of Medicine News. Seattle, WA: University of Washington. http://depts.washington.edu/mednews/vol8/no15/police.html