High-speed chases
High-speed chases refer to police pursuits involving vehicles where law enforcement officers attempt to apprehend suspects who are fleeing, often at dangerously high speeds. These chases have become a significant societal concern, raising critical legal and safety issues for both the public and law enforcement agencies. While officers view them as necessary for capturing suspects, particularly in serious offenses, high-speed pursuits can lead to severe accidents, injuries, and fatalities. Research indicates that a substantial number of crashes occur within the initial minutes of a chase, underscoring the urgent nature of the risks involved.
The financial implications are notable, with litigation costs linked to pursuit-related incidents burdening taxpayers. Various police departments have begun to implement stricter policies to balance the need for effective law enforcement with public safety, including prohibiting pursuits for minor traffic violations and enhancing accountability. Despite these efforts, the number of reported pursuits often underrepresents the actual occurrences, raising concerns about transparency and public awareness. High-speed chases are also sensationalized in popular culture, appearing in numerous films and television shows, which can influence public perception and attitudes toward police pursuits. As techniques and technologies evolve, including aerial tracking and non-lethal stopping methods, the ongoing debate surrounding the necessity and safety of high-speed chases remains pertinent in modern law enforcement.
High-speed chases
SIGNIFICANCE: Police high-speed pursuits raise important legal and safety issues for both law-enforcement organizations and the public.
Vehicular pursuits have grown into a major social problem, as pursuit litigation costs taxpayers millions of dollars annually. In addition, such pursuits raise concerns regarding the safety of the officers involved and of the public. Officers’ actions during a vehicular pursuit can have far-reaching implications for law-enforcement agencies as well as the individual officers involved. If an officer is found to have been negligent during the course of the pursuit, subsequent litigation can be financially devastating for both department and police officer.
Although the safety risk is not exorbitantly high, there is little doubt that high-speed chases can become dangerous quite quickly in some circumstances. Research has demonstrated that approximately half of all pursuit crashes occur within the first two minutes of a chase.
Despite varying rates of crashes, injuries, and fatalities, police pursuits have been supported by researchers and officers alike as a necessary component of police work. Police officers believe that felony offenses are the most likely to result in a high-speed chase. Officers have also indicated that their approval or tolerance for a pursuit increases in proportion to the seriousness of the crime committed. When asked about the abolishment of pursuits, officers generally respond that the police, as a law-enforcement institution, would suffer a loss of respect from the public as well as potential offenders. Most police officers have indicated a belief that the danger to the public would increase, as would crime in general, if pursuits were eliminated as an acceptable means of apprehending suspects.
During the early twenty-first century, the Chicago and Los Angeles police departments developed new written policies to aid officers in instances of high-speed pursuit in an effort to decrease threats to public safety. The policies prohibit pursuits following most routine traffic violations and place tighter controls on officers in unmarked vehicles. The more restrictive policies are designed to increase police accountability and public safety while simultaneously reducing the dangerousness of vehicular pursuits.
Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Fatality Analysis Reporting Systems (FARS) have been used in an effort to come to terms with disparities observed among research studies concerning the precise number of fatalities occurring as a result of police pursuits. There have been discrepancies between many research endeavors and official data as to the exact number of individuals killed or injured as a result of police pursuits.
In spite of the perceived danger posed by pursuits, many scholars have noted a trend in the underreporting of police pursuits. A dramatic disparity between the official record of pursuits and those in which officers actually engage has emerged. It has been estimated that for every fourteen vehicular pursuits, as few as five are reported. This has been termed the "dark figure" of pursuits. Helicopters are sometimes employed to track suspects in pursuits and to film chases for broadcast. Data reported in an article in the November 2017 New Yorker magazine notes that since 1979, more than thirteen thousand people have been killed in the United States as a result of police pursuits. A special report issued by the US Department of Justice in May 2017 found that almost one person a day was killed annually in a pursuit-related crash in the period from 1996 to 2015. An investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle found that at least 3,336 people died as a result of police pursuits in the United States from 2017 to 2022. By January 2013, written vehicle pursuit policies were available in all state police and highway patrol agencies, 97 percent of local police departments, and 96 percent of sheriff's offices, according to the same US Department of Justice report.
In Popular Culture
High-speed chases are also popularized in movies and television. The spy thriller James Bond films feature action sequences that typically involve high-speed pursuits using a variety of vehicles, aircraft, and marine craft. The French Connection, a 1971 crime thriller, involved a police chase of an automobile; the 1968 movie Bullitt, starring actor and race car driver Steve McQueen, included a chase sequence. The use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) has led to the development of even more thrilling chases such as in the Bourne films, the Mission Impossible films, the Mad Max films, John Wick films, and most movies that feature superheroes. Aside from being an aspect of many action films, there are movies that are primarily about high-speed chases: the Fast and the Furious film franchise, Drive (2011), Baby Driver (2017), and Gone in 60 Seconds (1974, 2000). The tropes of the high-speed chase have also been spoofed in films such as The Blues Brothers (1980), Hot Fuzz (2007), Spy (2015), Bad Boys (1995), and even the animated film Cars 2 (2011).
On television, shows such as the Dukes of Hazzard (1979–1985) and Knight Rider (1982–86), featured iconic automobiles that typically figured in exciting high-speed chases. In real-time televised events, the 1994 chase in Los Angeles, California—where ex-football player O. J. Simpson was pursed in a white Ford Bronco after his wife was discovered stabbed to death—was one of the first real-time televised pursuits. Real-life chases are now affected by things like live-streaming or broadcasting over the internet, postings to social media, and twenty-four-hour news cycles. Throughout the world, high-speed chases have become increasingly problematic, endangering the lives of civilians and police. In many of the chases, the suspect is fleeing for a minor infraction. Many of the chases are broadcast live on television or spread via the internet and raise ethical concerns as real-time and unedited footage confers the possibility of capturing violent deaths for public viewing. The video game industry has also been accused of turning the dangerous activities of high-speed chases into thrilling spectacles as in the Grand Theft Auto video game series (1997–2013).
Legal Issues
Police pursuits have involved the legal system to a large extent. The Supreme Court, as well as district courts, has been called upon to rule on issues such as Fourth Amendment seizure considerations, Fourteenth Amendment concerns over due process, and the use of force in pursuits.
The Supreme Court refuses to detail specifically the circumstances under which a pursuit amounts to a Fourth Amendment seizure, but it has suggested that a pursuit communicates to reasonable persons that they are not at liberty to ignore the police and go about their business. Originally, the Court agreed with the district courts by stating that a pursuit alone did not constitute a seizure protected under the Fourth Amendment. Later, this decision was overturned as justices deemed a pursuit an actual seizure applicable under the Fourth Amendment.
Additionally, the Court has ruled on issues related to the guarantee of substantive due process laid out in the Fourteenth Amendment. Justices have decided that only arbitrary conduct shocking to the conscience and unrelated to the legitimate object of arrest satisfies the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of due process of law.
Twenty-first Century Developments
Many police departments have experimented with strategies to reduce, and possibly eliminate, the need for high-speed vehicular pursuits. Aerial pursuit is a tactic used by many larger urban departments. Aircraft such as helicopters can hover and maneuver in ways that can safely track a suspect fleeing on foot or in a vehicle. The use of aircraft is an effective, albeit costly, method of pursuing suspects safely and with minimal danger to bystanders. Ideally, costs saved in decreasing litigation arising from vehicular chases could be put to good use in increased air patrol and pursuit.
Larger metropolitan agencies are also experimenting with "stop" techniques, such as so-called sticky foam, pulse guns, and road spikes, in an effort to decrease the need for lengthy vehicular pursuits in apprehending suspects. The added degree of safety to the general population has motivated departments to increase funding for these new tools, and many new devices have a great deal of potential in this regard. However, the use of devices such as spike strips bring controversies of their own, including the potential of causing an out-of-control crash and the danger posed to officers deploying them in a roadway. In 2017, it was reported by CBS News that more than fifty agencies are using GPS trackers fired from the grill of police cars that adhere to the fleeing vehicle and allow the pursuer to end the active pursuit to reduce the immediate danger to the public.
Although some jurisdictions had implemented restrictions on police pursuits, several were reversing these policies. By early 2024, for example, Florida and Washington state had rolled back restrictions, as had San Francisco, California.
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