TROY, AL- Police pursuits are one of the most dangerous activities police officers engage in, both for the officers and the public. While it is also dangerous for the bad guys engaging police in pursuits, if they choose to risk their lives, it’s their choice.
A recent spate of fatal crashes during police pursuits is increasing calls from some quarters to curb the ability of police to engage in them, once again tying the hands of police while ignoring the symptoms.
Cruiser goes airborne after conducting a PIT maneuver
WBOY-12 reports that four people were killed last week when a vehicle being pursued by an Alabama state trooper went off the road and struck a tree.
On Sunday, a man fleeing police in Texas died in a crash. And last week in California, three people were killed in crashes during police pursuits in separate incidents.
A study conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) found that between 2017 and 2021, there were a total of 4,415 fatalities during police pursuits, with over half of those taking place in the southern United States. Conversely, only six percent of those fatalities occurred in the northeastern United States.
In 2023, a report from PERF called for police to ban car chases unless a violent crime has been committed and the suspect poses an imminent threat, citing a spike in fatalities and an increase in pursuits by some police agencies, including Houston and New York City.
Recently, some progress has been made in using technology to mitigate police pursuits, such as grappling systems, which have been used with some success. The downside of such a system is it requires the pursuing officer to get within close proximity to the pursued vehicle, which increases the chances of a crash.
Likewise, there has been some progress made in systems that use a ballistic probe shot into the pursued vehicle, which can disrupt the electronics, shutting down the engine.
The latest crashes include the one in Alabama, where a driver trying to elude the highway patrol on a rural road in Pike County went off the road, killing the driver and two passengers who were ejected from the car due to not being seat-belted. A fourth passenger was not ejected but was also killed in the crash.
Highway patrol spokeswoman Amand Wasden said that the crash remains under investigation and no other information is available, including what precipitated the crash.
Meanwhile, in Fort Worth, Texas, police were pursuing a vehicle operating without headlights on Interstate 35 when the car crashed into multiple other vehicles, finally crashing and killing the driver, the Fort Worth Police Department reported.
In Southern California, the Pomona Police Department issued a statement reporting that officers from that department were pursuing a suspect involved in a domestic violence dispute last week when he struck another vehicle, killing the couple inside, who were only days from the birth of their child, KCBS-TV reported.
Finally, the Orange County (CA) Sheriff’s Department reported that deputies attempted to stop a stolen U-Haul truck before it crashed into an SUV, killing the SUV’s driver and critically injuring three passengers.
Any officer can tell you that police pursuits are one of the most intense, high-risk activities they engage in, and will also admit that sometimes the adrenaline of a chase can impair proper judgment.
A significant number of police agencies nationwide have severely restricted the circumstances under which officers can pursue, and when pursuits are allowed, officers must operate under strict guidelines.
Many states have also tied the hands of police officers and placed significant restrictions on pursuits.
A good mix of training, including pursuit driving under realistic conditions, along with the use of improved technology, should enable police to continue pursuits in certain circumstances. Outright bans of pursuits, which have been proposed by some lawmakers, only play into the hands of the criminals.
Comments
2026-04-07T16:43-0400 | Comment by: Dawn
The debate over pursuits reminds me of the parallel debate over gun rights. Pursuits are high-risk and some do result in crashes that injure and kill people. But leaving criminals free to do whatever they want because police CAN'T pursue them will also result in injuries and deaths, because criminals are going to criminal. The thing is, even if there are comprehensive studies that show that more lives are saved because of pursuits that result in criminals being apprehended than people injured or killed, it won't really matter. The anti-police people out there are going to ignore the lives saved, just as surely as they already ignore the hundreds of thousands of crimes stopped every year by legal gun ownership and instead focus on the considerably less INNOCENT lives lost in gun violence. (We won't even get into how they keep defending criminal thugs killed by other thugs, police protecting themselves and the public, or innocent citizens protecting themselves or others.)