High-speed police chases have killed thousands

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.

The bystanders and the passengers in chased cars account for nearly half of all people killed in police pursuits from 1979 through 2013, USA TODAY found. Most bystanders were killed in their own cars by a fleeing driver.

Recent cases show the danger of the longstanding police practice of chasing minor offenders.

A 25-year-old New Jersey man was killed July 18 by a driver police chased for running a red light.

A 26-year-old Ohio woman was killed July 21 when the man she was with fled police after a suspected shoplifting incident and crashed into three other vehicles in Streetsboro.

A 60-year-old federal worker was killed March 19 near Washington, D.C., by a driver police chased because his headlights were off.

“The police shouldn’t have been chasing him. That was a big crowded street,” said Evelyn Viverette, 83, mother of federal worker Charlie Viverette. “He wouldn’t have hit my son if the police hadn’t been chasing him.”

Some police say drivers who flee are suspicious, and chasing them maintains law and order.

“When crooks think they can do whatever they choose, that will just fester and foster more crimes,” said Milwaukee Police Detective Michael Crivello, who is president of the city’s police union.

Many in law enforcement, including the Justice Department, have recognized the danger of high-speed chases and urge officers to avoid or abort pursuits that endanger pedestrians, nearby motorists or themselves. At least 139 police — none from Ohio — have been killed in chases, federal records show.

The Justice Department called pursuits “the most dangerous of all ordinary police activities” in 1990 and urged police departments to adopt policies listing exactly when officers can and cannot pursue someone. “Far more police vehicle chases occur each year than police shootings,” the department said.

Despite the Justice Department’s warning, the number of chase-related deaths in 2013 increased slightly from 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.

Many police departments still let officers make on-the-spot judgments about whether to chase based on their perception of a driver’s danger to the public. Officers continue to violate pursuit policies concerning when to avoid or stop a chase, police records show. And federally funded high-tech systems that would obviate chases, such as vehicle tracking devices, are undeveloped or rarely used due to cost.

At least 11,506 people, including 6,300 fleeing suspects, were killed in police chases from 1979 through 2013, the most recent year for which NHTSA records are available. That’s an average of 329 a year — nearly one person a day.

In Ohio, there have been 385 deaths in 368 crashes during that time with an average of nearly one death per month.

Bad data

But those figures likely understate the actual death toll because NHTSA uses police reports to determine if a crash was chase-related, and some reports do not disclose that a chase occurred.

Kansas, Michigan and Minnesota state records all show more chase-related deaths than NHTSA shows for those states.

“It’s an embarrassment,” said Geoffrey Alpert of the University of South Carolina, a leading researcher on police pursuits who has done numerous Justice Department studies. NHTSA records “are the only national database we have on these fatalities, and it’s been consistently wrong.”

The number of innocent bystanders killed is impossible to pinpoint because hundreds of NHTSA’s records fail to show whether a victim was killed in a car fleeing police or in a car that happened to be hit during a chase.

Analyzing each fatal crash, USA TODAY determined that at least 2,456 bystanders were killed, although the death toll could be as high as 2,750. The newspaper found that 55% of those killed were drivers fleeing police. They ranged from armed-robbery suspects to a 10-year-old boy chased as he drove a pick-up truck 85 mph on a county road before hitting a tree, killing himself and his 7-year-old passenger.

In Ohio, the person killed is more likely to be the driver. Between 1979 and 2013, 69% of the 385 killed were drivers while 27% were passengers and 4% was either a pedestrian or a bicyclist.

Although police-camera footage often depicts the drama of squad cars racing after motorists, most chases begin benignly, with an attempted traffic stop. And most end quickly — 76% were over within five minutes, according to records of tens of thousands of chases in California.

“There’s no question that when you’re engaging in a chase, you’re engaging in something that can turn out many ways, and many are bad outcomes,” said John Firman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, whose survey of 17,000 chases nationally since 2001 shows that 92% began for a traffic violation, misdemeanor or non-violent felony such as car theft.

During a chase police can be overcome by “a need to ‘win’ and make the arrest,” which blinds them to the danger they are helping create, a 2010 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin reported.

Minor offenses, bad decisions

Few drivers fleeing police are wanted felons, according to statistics and research. Most committed minor offenses and “made very bad decisions to flee,” a 2008 paper by the Police Foundation said.

A Justice Department-funded 1998 study found after interviewing fleeing drivers that 32% drove off because they were in a stolen car, 27% because they had a suspended driver’s license, 27% wanted to avoid arrest and 21% because they were driving drunk.

“Overwhelmingly, someone is fleeing because they’ve got a minor warrant, their car isn’t insured, they’ve had too much to drink,” said Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, who sharply restricted his department’s pursuits in 2010 after four bystanders were killed in a three-month span.

Ohio Highway Patrol trooper’s have a policy to follow, but it’s vague when it comes to what offenses they can pursue, saying it depends on the “seriousness” of the offense. Sgt. Vincent Shirey with the patrol’s public affairs unit said if someone speeds and won’t stop, he’ll pursue them.

“If there’s heavy traffic, rain, or it goes into a city, I’ll disengage if all I have is a speeding violation,” he said.

Ohio troopers also are required to end a pursuit if they can identify the driver and can arrest them later unless it’s for an offense that would endanger others. A trooper also is required to notify superiors of a pursuit and is a supervisor guides the trooper. Every pursuit, regardless of outcome, is reviewed afterward by a panel, Shirey said.

Training and technology needs

Although police chases have been recognized as dangerous for nearly half a century, both training and technology remain inadequate, experts say.

The average police trainee received 72 hours of weapons training compared to 40 hours of driving training, only a portion of which covered chases, according to a 2006 Justice Department study of police training academies.

Ohio’s peace officers receive just 24 hours of defensive driver training. However, the state has made available a driving simulator agencies can request be brought to them for brush-up sessions at no cost to the departments.

Chases have been left behind in the modernization of police equipment that is now moving toward outfitting officers with body cameras.

Police use of Tasers, body armor, cameras and computers in patrol cars has soared, Justice Department reports show.

Yet the principal “technology” for chases are tire spikes — two decades old and seldom used because police must know where a fleeing car is heading so they can pull a strip of spikes across a road.

Devices that would shut off the engines of moving cars by transmitting microwaves are not commercially available a decade after the Justice Department spent $300,000 on their development.

A device that shoots a small, adhesive GPS tag onto a car exterior was introduced for police in 2010, but is used by only 20 of the nation’s 18,000 police departments. Attaching a GPS tag lets police stop their chase — which prompts fleeing drivers to slow down — and follow the car by computer until it stops, where they can make an arrest.

The $5,000 purchase cost deters departments, which often spend capital funds and federal grants on routine items such as car tires and hiring more officers, said Trevor Fischbach, president of StarChase LLC, the manufacturer, which got a $380,000 federal grant. “We’re in the 21st Century,” Fischbach said. “We should be using 21st-century tools that are available.”

Facing pushback

Police departments that restrict chases have faced resistance from officers.

In 2012, the Florida Highway Patrol changed from a policy that allowed officers to chase anyone, to a policy that allowed pursuits only of suspected felons, drunk drivers and reckless drivers. The number of highway patrol pursuits fell almost in half: from 697 in 2010-2011, to 374 in 2013-2014.

But 35% of the pursuits in 2013 and 2014 violated the new chase restrictions, state reports show.

Milwaukee police still oppose Chief Flynn’s 2010 policy restricting chases to suspected violent felons and people who present “a clear and imminent threat to the safety of others.”

“The crooks understand that this is our process,” said Michael Crivello, the police union president. “Criminals know their car is almost like their safe locker. They can keep drugs and guns in their safe locker.”

Flynn restricted chases after four bystanders were killed over three months in 2009 and 2010. Immediately after the deaths, Flynn defended his officers, noting they followed department policy and had actually stopped their pursuits only to have the fleeing drivers continue speeding away and hit the bystanders.

“I thought to myself, it’s not enough that we have a policy that tells our officers to terminate pursuits when they become unsafe. That was the industry standard,” Flynn said. “I needed an extra line to stop the pursuit in the first place, not because the officers were driving recklessly, but because we can’t control the behavior for those who refuse to stop for police.”