Car-Chase Calculus: Risk Vs. Benefit

High-speed car chases have become so common on television that viewers can easily lose perspective and see a car chase “as an aesthetic occasion,” said Leo Braudy, a film and culture historian 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.

“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 to 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 Orange 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 number of pursuits and injuries associated with car chases has 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.

In 1995, the LAPD logged 816 vehicle pursuits, making the department far and away the region’s leader in that category, according to a 1996 study by the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Southern California.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department, by comparison, had eight pursuits in the same year and in 1996 was lauded by the ACLU as a model for other major Southern California law enforcement agencies. Statistics for more recent years were unavailable.

Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Hector Rivera said that, in general, the watch commander and field supervisor both have the discretion to stop a pursuit under several circumstances. Those include when they believe the crime committed doesn’t call for such a potentially dangerous measure, or when a helicopter or other resource is available, or the fleeing suspect poses no great danger to the public at large.

The policy cutting back on high-speed chases began in 1993.

“The safety of the public, safety of the officers and the safety of the perpetrator are taken into consideration each time a pursuit is initiated,” Rivera said. “We stand behind our policy; this is what we adhere to.”

For any law enforcement agency, the controversy over vehicle pursuits boils down to a weighing of benefits and risks: the benefits in catching dangerous drivers and fleeing felons versus the risks of injury or death to suspect, officer and innocent bystanders.

The ACLU has been at 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 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,” Alpert said.

The justices ruled in May 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 pursuing 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 started and stopped. According to preliminary numbers from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, police chases resulted in 31 deaths last year.

Several high-profile incidents have 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 into 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, including five innocent bystanders, killed in Temecula when a truck full of illegal immigrants fleeing the Border Patrol struck a sedan and two pedestrians.

The 1992 incident prompted Immigration and Naturalization Service officials to tighten their guidelines on Border Patrol pursuits.

The ACLU study two years ago criticized some agencies for aggressively chasing 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 has stood by its policies.

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, although authorities say many serious felons were caught in the chases.

In contrast, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department in 1996 decided to revamp its guidelines.

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.

LAPD Cmdr. Rick Dinse, however, thinks that 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.

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