Crash Underlines Doubts About High-Speed Chases

It all happened in a few moments in the middle of the night. A driver sped away from a Cypress police officer, slammed into a car carrying two young women, and another high-speed pursuit ended in tragedy.

Tuesday’s fatal incident about 2:30 a.m. in Anaheim raised anew questions about the peril of such chases, which have left at least eight people dead in Orange County over the last year.

Two sisters died at the scene after their car was broadsided, and a passenger in the speeding vehicle died later. Cypress police said they will review their officer’s actions to ensure that he complied with department regulations.

But Anaheim investigators said they found nothing to indicate that the officer did anything improper.

“He had no chance to terminate the pursuit,” Anaheim Police Lt. John Haradon said. “This all happened in less than a minute. They only traveled three-fourths of a mile.”

Cypress Police Sgt. Ed Bish said, “There wasn’t a lot of time. The car went through two major intersections. The first one, a gun was thrown out of the car. The second is where the accident occurred.”

Critics of such pursuits question whether the Cypress officer should have begun the chase at all, especially when the driver was suspected of nothing more than traffic violations.

“You have to balance the nature of the offense with the risk to the public,” said Geoffrey Alpert, a criminologist at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and one of the nation’s foremost critics of high-speed chases.

“If the guy gooses and runs and gets up to speed really quickly, I see no reason to chase. It’s not worth it,” Alpert said.

Tuesday’s fatal pursuit happened less than a year after three Orange County high-speed chases within a month left five people dead.

Like Tuesday’s chase, all those incidents were provoked by suspicion of nonviolent crimes: theft of a car, theft of camera equipment and a traffic violation.

On New Year’s Eve in Fountain Valley, a Jeep driven by top-ranked boxer Ernie Magdaleno, 33, collided with a fleeing car whose 19-year-old driver was suspected of stealing photographic equipment. The crash killed Magdaleno and the suspect and critically injured the suspect’s 20-year-old companion.

Magdaleno’s family filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court alleging that a Fountain Valley police officer was driving more than 100 mph without lights or siren during the chase, and “failed to balance the interests of public safety with law enforcement.” The suit seeks unspecified damages.

Less than week after Magdaleno’s death, two suspected car thieves fleeing Fullerton police lost their lives when their car struck a light pole, split in half and exploded.

And last December, a 38-year-old Fullerton man being pursued for a traffic violation slammed into a concrete wall after failing to stop for Costa Mesa police.

Many law enforcement officials say that, despite such tragic endings, high-speed pursuits are a necessary tool. Without them, they say, criminals simply would not believe that they had to stop. And fatalities are relatively rare in light of the number of pursuits, officials say.

According to California Highway Patrol statistics, there were 7,817 pursuits by all police agencies in the state in 1995, with 25 of these resulting in collisions in which 33 people died. Of those killed, 19 were passersby. Another 732 pursuits resulted in accidents causing injuries to 1,107 people.

Alpert said law enforcement agencies could avoid the majority of such tragedies by following a simple rule: If the crime involves only property and is not a “violent felony,” don’t chase at high speeds.

Tuesday’s incident may not have met that standard, he said, acknowledging that the officer had no time to reflect on the situation.