A dangerous person is being chased by police. Then, two, three, eventually fifteen cars are involved in a chase.
What the fuck?
Couldn’t at least ten of those fuckers had something better to do other than contributing to this overkill?
Have you ever seen video of what happens when a person is caught after fleeing in a car? At most, five guys tackle the guy, than it’s over.
Wait, I know. Cops love being where the action is, who can blame them? Good thing the entire town’s force of 35 cops can be there to witness the action!
Backup is not only a good idea, it is part of most police departments doctrine, however, there is a line here. How many officers would be too wastefull for a case involving 1 person, 8, 16, 32?
BTW, the 15 cop car info I’m getting is from a chase in San Diego that was just recently on RealTV.
Once the guy’s in the back of the cruiser, since you were only spectating, how bout you go back and do your fucking job? Protect and serve, not gawk and linger.
Damn you EddyTeddyFreddy, I was just about to link to that story. You also read Cnn.com, do you? :dubious:
When I read the headline, the first thing that came into my mind was the guy from To Kill a Mockingbird. Remember when the police shoot the black guy like 50 times in the back as he tries to climb over the fence? :dubious: This isn’t the same, though…
Regarding the story posted by EddyTeddyFreddy, here are some highlights, including what happened to some of those 120 rounds fired:
The driver, 44-year-old Winston Hayes, was hit four times but survived.
(Wow 1 out of every 30 shots hit the suspect).
One deputy was also wounded by friendly fire. (Well accidents will happen.)
Some people who live nearby reported their homes were hit by bullets as well.
Also, the police department claimed that there will be a policy change regarding the use of firearms. When the order is given to fire, it is up to the discretion of each officer whether to shoot or not. This is vaguely similar to leaving it up to individual corporations whether they wish to comply with pollution standards or not. (Which a certain Commander-In-Chief mandated when he was Governor of his state).
While the case you mentioned is beyond ridiculous, and it is not my intention to try and defend it specifically, I take objection to the corporate pollution standards comparison. Pollution standards can be very speficially defined and policed.
I defy you to come up with a standard regulation that defines exactly when an officer should shoot in all circumstances. Given the wide variety of situations that can occur, I expect you’ll find a regulation that in many cases will either endanger the officer’s life in an obvious-to-everone-there manner or have the suspect killed when it was obvious to everyone there it wasn’t neccesary. Unless of course, your regulation is three billion pages long and you’re omnipotent
I don’t see a way not to make it up to the discretion of the office on the scene. That’s what disiplinary hearings are for.
Here’s an idea. Since helicopters are already in the air watching the car, how about stopping the police cars from tailing the guy, let the chopper follow the guy home, and then have your cops politely walk up to his front door and arrest him…
First of all, it might have been misleading when I brought “Dubya” into the conversation. That “120 shot” incident took place in Southern California and not Texas.
Driver8
You took objection to my analogy with the corporate pollution standards. For one thing I said the comparison was “vaguely similar”. When Dubya was Governor of Texas he said corporations were required to comply with anti-pollution standards on a voluntary basis. So, they could comply (and spend extra money on anti-pollution processors) or just skip that extra expense and pollute away. I wonder which choice the corporations made.
So, instead of giving the police an order to fire, they will leave it up to the individual officers to fire at their own discretion. Despite review boards and disciplinary hearings (and even video tapes), there’s always the “well you weren’t there” excuse.
They do this sometimes, but then, what about the people innocently motoring about their business when Mr. Loose Cannon comes barreling through with no police immediately at hand? What about Mr. Multiple Apartments Concealed from Overhead Observation? What about multiple suspects bailing and going seperate ways? In some cases, your suggestion is a good one, in others, it’s useless, and the cops won’t know which it’ll be until too late.
Let the cruisers roll. Just not so many of them, perhaps.
These, and a thousand other incidents every year (more or less spectacular) like 'em, highlight one of the largest problems facing the United States (at all levels from the tiny township cop departments up through the many massive federal agencies). And that probem is, the increasing militarization of law enforcement and the willingness of the brass in these organzations to use what was once considered extraordinary force in pursuit of increasingly minor offenses.
I find particularly appalling the automobile chases where a cop will nudge his car up against the rear quarter of the car he’s pursuing - often at highway, or greater, speeds trying push that car out of control. This just seems more than stupidly dangerous.
I’m certain this belongs in a different thread, but . . .
That’s not quite accurate. Here are the facts:
There was a loophole (the loophole was a kind of grandfather clause) in Texas’ 1971 Clean Air Act that polluters were taking advantage of. Obviously this loophole existed long before Bush became governor of Texas. After Bush did become governer, public pressure to clean up the air in Texas became strong enough that something had to be done. A new plan was proposed by - I dunno who exactly - that would close up the gradfather clause in the 1971 law. Bush appointed a commission of corporate execs to review the new plan and recommend to him a course of action. The panel devised and recommended a scheme of “voluntary compliance” with the closure of that loophole. Bush agreed. (After Bush made his way into the Whitehouse, the loophole was finally closed in May 2001.)
The way you have stated it makes a rather strong implication that Bush devised, out of whole cloth, a “voluntary compliance” scheme which would remove some mandatory pollution controls. In actual fact, the “voluntary compliance” provisions of the enacted legislation didn’t really change the status quo. Although it is true that Bush failed in this action to act to reduce pollution, he didn’t do anything to increase it either. Further, the legislative bodies of the state of Texas are just as complicit as Bush in the “voluntary compliance” scheme.
That’s called “parallel pursuit,” and it’s becoming increasingly common, but again, it’s a tactic that can only work when conditions permit.
So cops should set up roadblocks for traffic stops? Seems a little over-the-top. Most pursuits don’t devolve to the level of over-kill described in the OP. And roadblocks are far from fool-proof - very often, there is no reaction force available to make up a roadblock. For that matter, there are only a relative handful of aerial units available, and then only in the more wealthy jusiditcions. Never-the-less, roadblocks are used when appropriate, as are ‘stop sticks’ and the like. Those tactics aren’t always availble, though, and even when they are, they’re still no guarantee of a desireable outcome.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer, and having cruisers in the immediate vicinity greatly increases flexibility of action. I’ll still agree that in some cases there is a definate level of over-reaction.
Some of them have tried this, but it doesn’t improve matters overall. Thing is, they’ve found that most people who take off just plain don’t slow down even if the cops stop following. By the time they get the chopper in the air, the real reason the cops are there is to warn the people up ahead.
The police don’t really like it either, but they don’t have a whole lot of good options, really.
All of these are fine suggestions, from people seemingly unfamiliar with how law enforcement works. I’ll shed some light if i can…
First.
A fifteen car chase may seem excessive, but if you’ll recall the West Hollywood bank robbery where 2 armored thugs out gunned several DOZEN police officers, and given the state of our gun culture, 15 police officers participating in a chase is more over-insurance than overkill. Further, consider the mind of the person who is running away; the more desperate he or she becomes, the more likely he or she is to be the kind of dangerous that the officers in West Hollywood faced. Even if they’re unarmed.
What you’re missing here Unc is that the people who end up running from the police are more dangerous than they have ever been, thus the so-called ‘militarization’ of police departments becomes not only necessary, but prudent. The facts are that police departments are created using a paramilitary model, and in reality the more like a military unit a police department becomes, the better it is for the citizens. Sound silly? Read on. Police officers and management are increasingly more sensitive to how they’re perceived, because perception means budget money, and budget money means more for the departments. The officers, if they are a part of a solid structure, are better disciplined, more fit, both mentally and physically, more educated and that much more adept. Do they dress like soldiers? Some, yes, but that’s as much psychological as it is tactical. A person in a tactical looking uniform is intimidating, and he or she should be. Someone who chooses to run from the police, needs to fear the police will catch them, because they’ve broken the law. A person in a standard man-with-a-badge uniform is less so, and for the lost kittens and the keys locked in the car, it should be that way. There are two levels of service in law enforcement, one calls for militaristic action, one calls for the compassionate assistance of a knowledgeable advocate.
The use-of-force continuum has changed in the favor of the citizen in the last 30 years. There are fewer backroom police beatings than there were say, in 1969. Operations have become, with the exception of ones that need to stay under wraps, an open book. Regarding the PIT maneuver; it works, and it’s dangerous, but if an officer can disable a fleeing persons vehicle without any danger to the surrounding populace, just by giving his opposite rear quarter a tap, then i’d consider it a victory over having to actually shoot the person.
The problem with roadblocks, aerial patrols and ‘stop-sticks’ are that their use is limited to a certain set of circumstances. Roadblocks are only effective when you can keyhole the suspect, if there is another way out, the roadblock is useless. Aerial patrols are, as Tranquilis has noted, the domain of those departments who can afford the several hundred thousand to million dollar chopper, and the $900 to $2000 per flight hour cost to run and maintain it.
Stop sticks turn a fleeing vehicle into an unguided missle, and run the risk of effecting police vehicles as well.
There aren’t a lot of options, and the ones we do have are being further scrutinized. You can’t allow people to run and not chase them, because of the dangerous precedent it will set. You can’t tailor a policy to every situation, and without those policies, you can’t make the streets safer. It’s a changing world that’s difficult to anticipate, and many departments are doing everything they can to change with it.
How many innocent bystanders are injured or killed every year because of a high-speed police chase?
Why should I tolerate the cops creating or exacerbating the risk to my personal safety on the highway and on residential streets because they really, really need to run that intercepter Camero at 160 mph to catch someone who has a joint in his car?
You’re assuming that it’s ego, and that the officers have perfect knowledge, catsix. We both know that the second isn’t true, and I really, really doubt that many officers want to put their lives at risk for the ego boost.
