COUNTYWIDE : How CHP Spikes Stubborn Speeders

It’s 15 feet long, wears stainless steel spikes and stops the bad guys.

Known as a speed strip, it’s been used three times by the California Highway Patrol in the past 1 1/2 years--twice in the past two weeks.

The CHP uses the device--stored at secret locations around the county--only as a last resort, when speeding motorists have ignored all efforts to get them to slow down and pull off the road.

When deploying the device, an officer wearing leather gloves grabs one of the yellow ropes attached to either end and lays the spike-studded strip across a highway with no more than two lanes in each direction. Then the officer waits for the speeding car to puncture its tires.

The narrow rubber, metal-backed strip is painted orange on one side and has detachable spikes the size of large nails punched through it. The last two times the strip was used, the drivers were arrested by a second officer waiting down the road.

Officer Dennis Aguilar said the CHP’s recent use of the gadget does not signal a new trend in catching speeders, because each situation must be judged independently by the officer and, preferably, the supervisor on duty. Aguilar has trained all officers in the Ventura station to use the strip.

“It has to be the right place and it has to be safe all around the board,” he said, referring to the welfare of the officers, the speeding driver and the public. Road conditions must also be taken into account. And the strip will only work on relatively narrow highways, he added, because the driver could drive around it.

On Oct. 29 on the Ventura Freeway, the device stopped a northbound driver who was later arrested on suspicion of reckless driving and failure to yield to the CHP officer’s red light and siren, CHP spokesman James Utter said. The driver was later transferred to the Ventura County Mental Health Center for 72-hour observation and evaluation, he said.

The driver’s “high speed and questionable lane changes” were reported to the CHP by another driver, Utter said. An officer spotted her on the Santa Clara Bridge, going 80 m.p.h. He tried to stop her with the usual techniques, but she kept driving.

Another officer laid a speed strip across the highway at Mussel Shoals, puncturing two of her tires, Utter said. She slowed to 30 m.p.h. and pulled over half a mile farther, near La Conchita, where she was arrested.

On Nov. 5, a driver involved in a high-speed chase throughout Orange, Los Angeles and Ventura counties was also stopped by the strip.

The chase, initiated in Fullerton by the Fullerton Police Department at 1:30 a.m., ended up at Las Posas Road on Pacific Coast Highway, Utter said.

Along the way, he said, CHP units from several Los Angeles County areas helped pursue the car, some trading gunshots with the three people in the car, who were suspected of armed robbery. Their speed ranged from 75 to 100 m.p.h. during the pursuit, until they hit the device, which punctured three of their tires. They stopped half a mile away and were arrested.