ACLU Urges Police to Alter High-Speed Pursuit Policy
Citing a fatal accident that ended a high-speed police pursuit in Mission Hills earlier this week, an American Civil Liberties Union official urged the LAPD on Thursday to immediately suspend its existing pursuit policy.
“I urge you to take immediate actions . . . and adopt an interim policy that would greatly reduce the number of pursuits and restrict the initiation of pursuits to specific, serious criminal activity,” Ramona Ripston, the executive director of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California, wrote in a letter to Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and Police Commission President Edith Perez.
The foundation last year released a report criticizing the department for “alarmingly high rates of officer, suspect and bystander injuries” resulting from chases.
Neither Parks nor Perez was available for comment Thursday night.
In Tuesday’s pursuit of two 19-year-old men in a stolen van, a Granada Hills woman was killed and her daughter seriously injured when their vehicle was struck broadside after the men fleeing police ran a red light.
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