With little stigma, police kill thousands of innocents during high speed pursuits

News outfits throughout the country have made a nasty habit of making police car chases a fixture of must-see-TV for years. But a recent article from USA Today offers some pretty good facts illustrating why newscasters should stop using chases to pad ratings, viewers should find their suspense elsewhere and police officers should eliminate high speed pursuits from their law enforcement tool bags once and for all.

From the newspaper:

More than 5,000 bystanders and passengers have been killed in police car chases since 1979, and tens of thousands more were injured as officers repeatedly pursued drivers at high speeds and in hazardous conditions, often for minor infractions, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

That’s 5,000 dead people, and thousands more injured, who had no direct involvement with the infractions that led to chases — collateral damage for adrenalin junkies, if you will.

Back in 1990, Department of Justice officials urged law enforcement agencies to enact strict policies about when an officer should give chase. But the directive has had little effect.

“[T]the number of chase-related deaths in 2013 was higher than the number in 1990 — 322 compared to 317, according to records of the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which analyzes all fatal motor-vehicle crashes,” USA Today reported.

USA Today found that a vast majority of police chases begin not in the name of brining serious offenders to justice, but rather occur when people guilty of very minor offenses flee the police.

“Police across the USA chase tens of thousands of people each year — usually for traffic violations or misdemeanors — often causing drivers to speed away recklessly,” the paper said.

In fact, officers far are more prone to give chase than they are to use their service weapons in the line of duty. And on the whole, they do so with far deadlier consequences.

“Far more police vehicle chases occur each year than police shootings,” according to the Justice Department.

While Americans routinely question police use of deadly force when it comes to shootings in the line of duty, chases are largely ignored.

But that has a lot to do with media reporting on chases and law enforcement reality shows like “Cops,” which show only the good outcomes of police pursuit: Bad guy crashes; good guy prevails.

In order for real change in police chase policies to occur, it will take much more than interdepartmental rethinking of when high speed pursuit is justified.

It will take pressure from the public, as well as self-restraint when the next car chase hits the local news. If fewer people watch, news outlets will stop pushing the chases so heavily to increase ratings. And when police officers realize that they are no longer being cheered on as high speed pursuits unfold but are rather being viewed as irresponsible civil servants putting innocent lives in danger, they’ll think twice about speeding down the highway trying to cause the guy with a broken taillight and a dime bag to crash in “controlled” fashion.

Read USA Today’s full report here.

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