For Police, It’s Safety First During a Car Chase : Tactics: Officers in vehicle pursuits often just let suspects run out of gas instead of resorting to shootouts or roadblocks.

Wild shootouts and blockades on the freeway make good fodder for “Smokey and the Bandit” movies, but police in real-life pursuits say the best strategy is simply to let the suspect run out of gas.

Such tactics as shooting it out with suspects or trying to block their path are unnecessary and unsafe, especially because police have helicopters, law enforcement experts said Friday. An important rule of thumb, they said, is that pursuing officers should never fire shots from a moving vehicle, even if a suspect is firing at them.

“We want to make sure they realize their job is to keep a suspect under observation. It’s not a race,” said Lt. Greg Manuel, spokesman for the California Highway Patrol’s headquarters in Sacramento. “Usually the goal is to follow these people until they stop. We have to maintain eye contact, so if the suspect runs out of gas, we will be there.”

CHP officers on Friday chased an armed murder suspect about 300 miles, eventually into Orange County, before the suspect ran out of gas on an off-ramp in Westminster and was shot to death. Along the way, the officers dodged shotgun pellets fired from the suspect’s car.

The standards for chases set by the CHP are similar to those that Orange County police and the County Sheriff’s Department have agreed to follow in avoiding freeway confrontations.

“It doesn’t need to be done (with roadblocks) in this day,” said Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Dick Olson. “That can be a dangerous situation to both the officers and the public.”

Blocking roads could force a shootout or cause a severe traffic wreck, endangering the lives of officers as well as onlookers.

“If you have a situation like this where you have a motorist who has already killed somebody for no reason at all, there is no telling what mental state this person is in. He may get into the L.A. area and try to shoot someone else,” Manuel said.

Law enforcement officials from various departments say that one goal predominates: safety of the public. At no time are the officers to do anything to endanger other motorists. Shots should be exchanged only if bystanders are safely out of the way.

“Each situation is tempered by judgment and common sense,” said Anaheim Police Sgt. Ronald W. Lovejoy. “We do not deliberately endanger innocent lives.”

Manuel said officers are trained to “first of all keep themselves and their cars under control at all times.”

“We want them to maximize their visibility by using lights and sirens, and since a fairly high amount of pursued drivers end up driving over their limit, we try to tell our officers to let them make the mistakes,” he said.

Olson said that with normal pursuits, such as chasing a speeder, no more than two cars tail the suspect. Instead, officers are stationed along the route, standing ready at on-ramps to participate if necessary.

“It doesn’t really serve any advantage to have a whole bunch of vehicles rolling down a highway in pursuit,” he said.

Helicopters are also brought in as quickly as possible so that the pursuing officers do not have to keep one hand on the wheel and one on the radio as they try to communicate with dispatchers, Olson said. Instead, they can concentrate on driving.

“The helicopter is another pair of eyes,” Manuel said.

As lengthy pursuits move into different areas, local CHP or police officers take over. One reason is to keep the officers from running out of gas or becoming fatigued; the other is because the local officers know the area’s roads better, Manuel said. In this case, a supervisor from CHP’s central Los Angeles district oversaw the entire pursuit, he said.

CHP officers are given 48 hours of driving training before graduating from the police academy, and they also undergo quarterly pursuit training.

Every pursuit by CHP officers is critiqued afterward. But in this case, the CHP will have an unusual teaching aid: Live tapes of the pursuit from local television stations.

Manuel said he would not have wanted to be in the shoes of the CHP officers involved in Friday’s chase.

“How in the world did they even get through L.A. traffic?” he said. “You not only have to keep your car in control, you have to keep out of the way of shots he is firing, and when the chase terminates, you have to deal with that.”

Times staff writer Donnette Dunbar contributed to this report.