My son was hit by a police car, which was going almost 50 on the wrong side of a 25mph street.
Amazingly, he only broke one leg , and he got out of the cast (and back to skateboarding) years ago. Like a decade ago, and I’d love to be over it.
Now, a skateboarder in LA gets hit by a cop car weaving onto the wrong side, and there are SO many parallels that it’s bringing back all those memories.
Cops not paying attention, both times they didn’t render aid right away, and both kids were interested in video (my son turned filming his skater friends into a career… Jerry Estrada won’t get to).
I have a friend who was hit by a police car. She was in a car, but was hit hard enough that she was injured. She still has neck pain from the accident. She was found “at fault”, because, you know, she should have teleported her car out of the way of the police.
@digs I hope you bear up for a bit. You’ll always be upset when you hear reports of things like your sons accident. You just will. It gets easier to go through the further you are away you are from the event. You probably already know that. But remember it.
Call your son, tell him you love him extra hard right now.
As it happens, John Oliver on Last Week Tonight just had a show on police chases. A recent San Francisco Chronicle investigation determined that from 2017 to 2022, at least 3,336 people people have been killed due to police chases and reckless driving by police, and 25% of those killed were innocent bystanders. In addition, a majority of the pursuits were initiated over minor non-violent offenses, or for minor traffic violations like not wearing a seatbelt, having tinted windows, or a broken taillight.
I’m sorry @digs. This is the kind of trauma only a parent can know and to have it come back again sucks so much.
In my state, the issue of police chases is controversial. We had a law severely restricting them for a few years but it was amended last year because reportedly crime increased. I think they’re trying to find a middle ground between public safety and letting a criminal fleeing be a free ticket to avoid arrest.
Regardless, cops being reckless should face extreme scrutiny, more than the public, due to their role. Just IMHO.
Thank you all, so much. It is tough, and seems tougher on me than the kid. I sent him the article, pointed out the parallels (and that he’s lucky to be here), and later said “Damn, do not read that til you’re safe at home. I’m tearing up…”
He texted back “Oh shit.” And later “Well I am fine.”
(I wanted to say “Well, I’m not!” but he didn’t need that.)
By the way, the cops* were at the hospital when we got there, and explained everything to us… but we still sued the department and got the kid a nice college fund.
*OTHER than the jerk who spent his time (after he hit a kid) backing up across the center line, back onto the correct side of the street, and then sat in his car for ten minutes…
My impression is that the sequence of events is frequently something like this: officer in police car attempts to pull over a driver for a minor violation; instead of pulling over the driver races away, so the police officer assumes they are guilty of something much more serious, or why would they run, and chases after them. To the police this seems to be logical, I guess. To me, it seems like there are a lot of other possible reasons for running, including but not limited to fear of deportation for having a broken taillight.
Occasionally I see a TV news story where a chase was taken over by a police drone, which is much more efficient at following a speeding car, and the chasee may think they got away and then slow down, thereby reducing the risk of damage or injury to innocent parties. I keep hoping that this will become the norm, but it doesn’t seem to.
There’s an ongoing scandal in New York State of police involved in serious vehicle crashes - often with signification indications of drunk driving - who get off with minimal or no punishment. Here’s a link to an article.
And anyone who thinks NY is unusual in this is very naive.
Other than serving the purpose of delaying the results until everyone has forgotten the incident, how the fuck does it take “several months” to investigate it?
There’s a video. The facts can be understood by a five-year-old. There should be policies and watching videos, an expert can determine if the policies were followed or not and if it was reasonable behavior.
The Challenger disaster commission only took four months and it investigated the climate in NASA.
This has been my thought for a while. They pull someone over, the video captures the license plate - now you know who they are and where they live, the car runs away. Let them go - show up at their home later with a force and arrest them. Yes, some may get away but you minimize the risk of killing or maiming someone just to chase them down for an expired tag or broken tail light.
This is tragic. Police have both impunity and qualified immunity. Neither is good for the rule of law.
But I’ll note that this 30-year-old victim is not a “kid”.
No, they know who owns the car. I don’t think any states have strict liability for the owners of a car used in a crime. The police also need to have evidence of who was operating the car.
If you watch very many police chase vids on YouTube, you’ll find a sizeable fraction of runners are driving stolen cars. Seeing the license plate is useless. Often the attempted traffic stop starts with the LEO, or their license plate scanner, recognizing the plate as stolen.
Agree, but some of them are in their own car. In either case, it’s probably better and safer to let them run and try to find them later. But I do get the concern that if LEO never chase, then people will never stop. I am not sure what the right balanced approach should be.
Many communities (like mine) now have Flock cameras, which track the license plate and car color and model of every car that passes by. A PD can put out a notice for a license plate number and conceivably nab them in the next town over. Seems Big-Brother-y, I know, but this scenario is the one of the intentions of the technology.
