Police Pursuits: Just One Form of Violence (From Policing and Violence, P 147-166, 2002, Ronald G. Burns, Charles E. crawford, eds., -- See NCJ-193031)

• NCJ Number: 193038
• Author(s): Matt Welch
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 20 pages
• Sale Source: Prentice Hall Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Legislation/Policy Analysis
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter examines the relationship between police pursuits and police violence.

Abstract

There are three types of pursuits in policing: pursuit of time, pursuit of a compliant subject, and pursuit of a noncompliant subject. The pursuit of time occurs when officers responding to a high-priority call are authorized by department regulations to use emergency lights and sirens. Compliant subject pursuits involve the pursuit of time and a subject. What makes these pursuits less dangerous than either of the other two is time. Compliant subject pursuits seldom take more than a few minutes, which explains the reduced likelihood for damage. The Pursuit Management Task Force in 1998 found that more than 50 percent of all pursuit collisions occurred during the first 2 minutes of a pursuit, whereas more than 70 percent of all collisions occurred before the sixth minute of a pursuit. The noncompliant subject pursuit involves the police chasing the subject in the typical television pursuit of good guy versus bad guy. The modes of pursuit are vehicle, air, boat, motorcycle, ATV (all-terrain vehicles), bicycle, mounted horse, and foot. During pursuits, both the suspect’s and the officer’s vehicles become dangerous weapons. Pursuits can cost the life of the officer, the offender, and/or innocent bystanders. These deaths and injuries are often violent and typically are focused upon by the media. Many courts hold the police partly responsible as the causation factor in crashes. More and more police agencies’ pursuit policies are under fire and facing lawsuits. The basis of most pursuit-related liability is negligence and the litigation focuses on whether the police acted prudently and reasonably under the circumstances. If the officer can be proved negligent in his/her actions and the plaintiff actually had damages, then the plaintiff has a good lawsuit. Despite the dangers and costs involved in police pursuits, empirical assessments of this practice remain limited. High- and low-tech methods, such as freeway traffic units, helicopters, videotape recorders, and spikes in the roadway, enable police departments to minimize vehicle pursuits. 2 tables, 36 references