Cut to the Chase

The fascination goes back almost a century. From the time motion was first captured on film, people have been transfixed by moving objects, and especially fast-moving ones.

“Movies, being movies, have always been obsessed with motion,” said Leo Braudy, a film and culture historian.

And chases have a long history in films, from horse chases in old westerns, to the antics of the clumsy Keystone Kops, to the unfettered excesses of “The Blues Brothers.”

With the increased use of helicopters by Los Angeles television crews, that fascination seems to have been transferred to high-speed car chases on the small screen.

TV viewers weaned on films that highlight violence and destruction can easily lose their perspective and see a car chase “as an aesthetic occasion,” said Braudy, a history professor at USC.

But those pursuits are harsh reality for the police officers involved, who often must make split-second decisions on when to initiate a chase and how to conduct it. Most chases end with successful apprehensions and no injuries to suspects, police or others. But to critics of high-speed chases, the risks involved are simply not worth it. Tragic incidents nationwide and locally have left concern and controversy in their wake.

“One serious accident can wipe out a whole family,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor and an expert in the field.

Nationwide, about one-fourth of the 1,810 people who died in pursuit-related incidents over a five-year period were innocent third parties. In California in the last four years, more than a third of pursuit-related fatalities were third parties, either vehicle occupants or pedestrians.

In a recent study, Alpert found that nearly half of police departments surveyed nationwide had modified their pursuit policies in the last two years. Nearly 90% of them made the policies more restrictive.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which was not included in Alpert’s study, is one agency that has limited its police pursuits mostly to serious crimes. Sheriff’s officials say the numbers of pursuits and injuries associated with car chases have dropped since the policy went into effect. The Los Angeles Police Department, which some have criticized as being too aggressive in car chases, has made no substantive changes in its policy in recent years.

The controversy over vehicle pursuits boils down to a weighing of benefits and risks--benefits in apprehending dangerous drivers and fleeing felons versus the risks of injury or death.

The American Civil Liberties Union has been in the forefront in calling for caution in car chases.

“We don’t say all police pursuits should be abandoned, but [departments] must adopt policies that protect innocent bystanders,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.

The ACLU and others want to limit chases to cases involving known dangerous criminals and to ban high-speed pursuits for traffic infractions or other relatively minor violations.

Law enforcement authorities, however, say police officers must be given latitude to make on-the-spot decisions.

“The bottom line is: Bad guys run because they have done something wrong,” said Los Angeles Deputy City Atty. Gregory P. Orland. “The majority of those who flee [police] are wanted for serious felonies to begin with.”

With a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that appears to virtually shield California police officers and their departments from damage suits arising from pursuit-related accidents, some observers fear chases will become even more common.

“You will see a lot more pursuits, injuries and death,” said Alpert.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May made it extremely difficult for those injured as a result of high-speed pursuits to argue in federal courts that their civil rights were violated.

The justices ruled that police officers do not violate a citizen’s right to due process, even in the case of “deliberate or reckless indifference to life,” if they cause an accident while performing their duties.

The case arose from a 1996 incident in Sacramento in which a teenager riding on the back of a fleeing motorcycle fell and was killed when struck by a deputy’s car.

Under California laws, officers are not liable for pursuit-related damages as long as they did not intentionally cause injuries, and agencies are immune if they have guidelines in place that clearly state when chases should be initiated and terminated.

California has consistently led the nation in the number of pursuit-related deaths. According to preliminary numbers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 31 deaths in the state attributed to police chases last year. Texas and New York, the next most populous states, combined for 12 such fatalities in the same period.

Those statistics are illustrated by the victims in several high-profile incidents that made headlines in Southern California. They include:

* Three teenage boys killed in Van Nuys in 1995 when a burglary suspect fleeing Los Angeles police ran a red light and rammed their car.

* A Pico Rivera man who was severely injured in 1994 when a suspect being chased by the California Highway Patrol on the Hollywood Freeway smashed his car at 130 mph. The man, Gabriel Torres, has a federal suit pending in appellate court, and his lawyer says the recent Supreme Court ruling will not deter him.

* Six people killed in Temecula when a truck full of illegal immigrants fleeing the Border Patrol struck a sedan and two pedestrians. Three occupants of the sedan, the pedestrians and a passenger in the truck were killed. The 1992 incident prompted Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to tighten their guidelines on Border Patrol pursuits.

Recent research seems to point to more restrictive pursuit policies nationwide. In Alpert’s 1997 study of more than 400 U.S. police departments, those that stopped allowing high-speed chases for relatively minor violations, such as traffic infractions, experienced a dramatic decrease in the number of pursuits and related injuries, he found.

Two years ago, the ACLU released a study detailing pursuit statistics of 12 Southern California law enforcement agencies, including the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The study criticized some of the agencies for too aggressively initiating pursuits even for the most minor of traffic infractions, and called on them to change their chase practices.

The LAPD at the time condemned the study as flawed and stood by its policies. Police commissioners generally agreed with the department’s leaders that officers should keep pursuing even low-level suspects who flee. Since that time, the LAPD has worked to improve its collection and analysis of police pursuit data, but has not altered its guidelines.

From 1994 to 1997, according to the most recent LAPD data available, the department was involved in 2,935 pursuits, with 18 people killed in resulting collisions. Nine were fleeing suspects, and nine were innocent third parties. There were 676 injuries, 78 of them serious. Most of the pursuits--62.5%--began with a traffic infraction, but 71% of the chases ended in a felony charge. Evading police in California is a misdemeanor, but if reckless driving is involved it can lead to felony charges.

Orland, the deputy city attorney in Los Angeles, said many of the felony charges leveled in the LAPD cases involve crimes other than evading police.

“In 1994, 670 murderers, rapists or assaulters were taken into custody following a pursuit [by the LAPD] that started with a traffic infraction,” he said. He added that in California, drunk drivers kill and injure far more people than police pursuits do.

Although the LAPD has held firm to its policies, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 1996 decided to revamp its guidelines.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Jerry Skaggs said that “giving chase after someone fails to yield to police may actually create more danger by creating more reckless driving.”

Since adopting the new policy, the department has seen a 37% decrease in the number of pursuits and a 42% drop in the number of injuries. There have been no pursuit-related accident fatalities since 1994 for the department.

Skaggs said that the policy has worked well and that there has been no visible effect on crime rates in the sheriff’s jurisdiction.

“It is a matter of opinion,” Skaggs said. “I guess you can make the case that when you pursue every offender you sometimes catch a criminal, but on the other hand you are jeopardizing other people. We have reached a good balance with our policy.”

LAPD Cmdr. Rick Dinse, however, thinks limiting pursuits can interfere with police work. “We don’t want people to think that all they have to do is run from police to avoid apprehension,” he said.

The LAPD’s pursuit policy calls for officers to “weigh the seriousness of the offense against the potential dangers” and lists a number of factors to consider, such as traffic, road and weather conditions.

“You have to keep in mind here who’s the criminal,” he said. “The decision to run from the police is not made by the police, but by the person who flees.

“If we have a policy saying that anyone can evade police by just driving recklessly and putting in danger the lives of others, that is just bad public policy,” Dinse said.

CHP Commissioner Dwight Helmick echoed Dinse’s point and added, “What you have is a lot of attorneys who want something specific on paper so they can use it to sue. Our policy is very complete and very justified, and I am not interested in providing little details so that some attorney can pick on them.”

Ripston said Helmick’s remarks show an arrogance on the part of some law enforcement officials who too easily dismiss criticism of their policies.

“This kind of response is indicative of an attitude that doesn’t prize public safety first,” she said.

As the debate over pursuit policies rages on, one thing seems to remain a constant: the public’s appetite for car chases on television. On Wednesday, at least two local stations interrupted normal programming for more than two hours to broadcast a slow chase that ended without any major incidents.

“The taste for watching the misfortune of other people is running a little high these days,” USC professor Braudy said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Police Pursuits

Existing Policies

Law enforcement policies on vehicle pursuits have come under scrutiny with the increased visibility resulting from live televised coverage.

Summaries of the pursuit guidelines of three agencies:

Los Angeles Police Department

Officers must “weigh the seriousness of the offense against the potential dangers to themselves or members of the community, and should consider” factors such as unreasonable risk to bystanders, traffic conditions, weather, type of area, whether the suspect can be apprehended later, and the nature of the initial infraction.

The policy calls for continual evaluation of risks as a pursuit progresses but leaves to the discretion of officers and supervisors a decision on whether to end a pursuit. It also calls for formal evaluation by supervisors of all pursuits.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department

Pursuits are allowed “only when the necessity of immediate apprehension outweighs the degree of danger created by the pursuit.” However, “deputy personnel shall immediately discontinue red light and siren and cease attempts to pursue the violator when the only known reason for the intended stop is a possible grand theft auto, a [traffic] infraction or a misdemeanor crime.” Exceptions: If a suspect displays a firearm or appears to be driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and his actions are so “flagrantly reckless” that they may put others in danger.

California Highway Patrol

“Uniformed employees shall conduct pursuits in compliance with applicable laws, sound professional judgment, and [agency] procedures... If the driver of a vehicle fails to stop as required, officers shall continue to follow until the violator voluntarily stops, or until relieved, or until circumstances warrant legal intervention (forcible stop) or voluntarily aborting the pursuit.”

Forcible stops include using tactics such as roadblocks, ramming, spike strips, boxing in or the use of firearms, among others.

The CHP would not say under what conditions it aborts pursuits, but its officers are not barred from pursuing based solely on the nature of the initial infraction, even though that is taken into consideration when balancing risks and the need to apprehend.

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Total pursuits (1997)

LAPD: 643

Sheriff: 326

CHP: 1,661

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Pursuits statewide

1997: 6,407

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Deaths (officers, suspects and bystanders)

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Pursuits by: LAPD Sheriff CHP 1997 1 0 12 1996 2 0 2 1995 9 0 6 1994 6 0 9

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Fatalities nationwide

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Third-party auto occupants Officers Suspects & pedestrians Totals 1996 5 267 118 390 1995 10 247 126 383 1994 3 284 105 392 1993 1 284 62 347 1992 1 224 73 298

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Fatalities by state

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Calif. Texas Georgia Florida N.Y. 1997* 31 10 22 15 2 1996 48 19 19 18 9 1995 57 25 23 23 6 1994 60 37 10 30 7 1993 48 30 21 15 10 1992 63 30 8 14 7

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* Preliminary figures

Source: National Highway Safety Administration