NCJ Number
177873
Journal
Criminal Justice Policy Review Volume: 9 Issue: 3-4 Dated: September/December 1998 Pages: 307-333
Date Published
1998
Length
27 pages
Annotation
This study assessed the diversity of police vehicle pursuit policies from a nonrandom national sample of 288 municipal and county police agencies.
Abstract
Police vehicle pursuits are a discretionary activity that involves substantial risks to police officers, bystanders, and communities, as well as legal liabilities for police agencies. Recent court decisions indicate the need for explicit formal policies to regulate pursuit behaviors and tactics; however, police organizations vary widely in whether or not they have formal written policies to regulate pursuit behaviors; for those departments with such written policies, there are differences in their comprehensiveness and explicitness. Diversity in the characteristics of pursuit policies in the study's sample of police agencies was examined by subjecting written pursuit policies to content analysis, coding their coverage of 12 policy concerns, including 114 specific issues. The policies were scored on comprehensiveness and restrictiveness; however, the measured pursuit policy variables were first factor analyzed to identify dominant policy themes or dimensions. Next, the policy variables were cross-tabulated with police-agency characteristics (e.g., location, size, and type of agency) to determine how organizational variables may influence or correlate with the specific content, comprehensiveness, and restrictiveness of their policies. The study concludes that police vehicle pursuit policies that are the most comprehensive are generally not the most restrictive, since they do not simply prohibit or permit vehicle pursuits, but comprehensively specify those circumstances under which pursuits should be undertaken and the parameters under which they should be conducted, continued, and terminated. The paper argues that pursuit policy must adequately and restrictively address each policy concern, not simply mention it. 3 tables, 13 references, and appended content dimensions of police vehicle pursuit policies, a typology of vehicle pursuit policies, and factor analysis of pursuit policy dimension scores