Lethal Weapon
Shumate, Richard
Lethal Weapon by Richard Shumate When thousands die in high-speed police chases, who do we really need protecting from? It was Saturday night in a suburb of Los Angeles, and 19-year-old Doug...
...So he did what many a doltish 19-yearold has done to impress a girl...
...And only a few renegade departments have begun to amend a decades-old policy of catch-at-any-cost...
...Neglecting to turn on their lights and siren, the officers followed Gray out of the lot and onto the crowded streets, caroming after the teenager...
...King was permanently injured, and four officers now face the possibility of lengthy prison sentences...
...Research assistance was provided by Elliott Beard and Pat Davis...
...We don't have anything on that—nothing," says the spokesman in St...
...But at 100 miles an hour, statistics don't make much of an impression on the average American cop...
...As Tartakoff proceeded through an intersection, Gray rammed into her at 90 miles per hour...
...Nowadays, the officers track fleeing subjects by radio, or from helicopters safely above the fray...
...Which is why, in his sheriff's department, prospective officers are given psychological evaluations designed to weed out poor high-stress performers...
...After watching a cocaine deal go down, he followed the dealer's car slowly down the street...
...As for the traffic violators and the otherwise unarmed and undangerous, police departments should just record their license numbers and let them go—for the moment...
...Surely the LAPD learns something from mistakes like this one...
...He remembers one chase particularly well...
...That adrenaline is saying that at any moment you might be killed and your kids won't have a father or your kids won't have a mother," explains Theodore Blau of the Manatee County, Florida, sheriff's department...
...He had taken his date to the drive-in, but there was a lengthy wait until the movie began...
...We don't keep that information," says a spokesman for the D.C...
...it means it's been relying on ingenuity over high velocity...
...Last winter alone, at least six D.C...
...Who knows what's in that car—a dead body, 10 kilos of cocaine, an atomic device...
...Fernandez's high-speed chase came to an end when the dealer smashed into two other cars and three people were injured, including a two-year-old girl who was riding in the car with the dealer...
...police officers speeding toward her...
...We don't keep records on that police-chase stuff," snaps an LAPD spokesman...
...And when they don't—when they mow down a pedestrian or run into a house—those incidents are seen as isolated flukes, not part of a nationwide trend, since urban police departments don't keep records on the subject...
...But when it comes to the one who doesn't, the emotions that kick in can make even a veteran officer forget the basics of Policing 101...
...It's just evidence that he's human...
...Panicked, Gray took off...
...Oncoming cars weren't avoiding me at all, even though I was in a marked car...
...He was just standing on the corner...
...After all, the job of a policeman is not to match a criminal feat for feat—to think, as Fernandez puts it, if they make it, you have to, too...
...As a result, the police culture may play a more important role in what happens next than mere chemical reactions...
...Your knees are shaking, and your hands are shaking— not because you're scared but because you're all pumped up...
...What criminal is going to stop if he knows that he can run away with impunity...
...Of course, the high-speed chase is not likely to disappear from American police culture altogether— nor should it...
...I was speeding along, but my emergency lights weren't working...
...How does that play out on the streets...
...Santee died after being hit twice, first by a speeding Cadillac and then by the Chicago police...
...Although the philosopher Seneca wisely mused that "hesitation is the best cure for anger," Smokey always went after the Bandit...
...Nor is the casualty count of American police chases restricted to suspects and innocent bystanders...
...But the prevalence of crashes, and even the number of officer deaths behind the wheel, have barely made a dent on American officer training...
...She had picked up a few of her husband's favorites at the local video store and begun the short drive back home...
...It's what policemen do...
...Surely somebody's paying attention...
...Then, during training, officers go through role-playing simulations that they can fall back on when confronted with real-life chases...
...After similar judgments in Texas, Virginia, and elsewhere, local governments and their insurance carriers have begun to take a long, hard look at how officers are trained for the chase...
...The other car went flying through the red light and down the street...
...As the Mobley case suggests, some folks are worth chasing: dangerous criminals fleeing after serious crimes...
...It was instinct...
...And if you crash, well, good Lord: a lost suspect, a departmental investigation, a lawsuit, a ruined career...
...A few days before Rodney King's notorious assault, there was a high-speed chase in Georgia...
...Mind you, most of the bad guys being pursued aren't rapacious, gun-toting thugs...
...Rodney King and Susan Tartakoff are both casualties of a timehonored police tradition: the high-speed chase...
...Richard Shumate is an editor of Atlanta's Creative Loafing...
...I really can't help you," says one of New York City's finest...
...Before long, a passing LAPD squad car spied Gray's vehicular gymnastics and turned into the drive-in to stop him...
...But in 1989's Canton v. Harris, the U.S...
...police departments are simply expected to cope at 100 miles an hour...
...The family of a Detroit automotive worker killed on his way to work by fleeing cars won $1 million from the city of Detroit and several other jurisdictions...
...This supervisor, somewhat detached from the emotions of the chase, evaluates the situation—the weather, the visibility, the traffic, the presence of pedestrians—and decides when to stop a hot pursuit...
...Perhaps that's why, despite the astounding frequency of police crashes, American police departments are remarkably indifferent to the casualties they leave in their wake...
...Standing on the corner—that's exactly what pregnant Regina Morton was doing when she got hit and thrown by a car being chased across Chicago's South Side...
...Yet what happens to all those Rodney Kings and Susan Tartakoffs can't be explained as a solely physiological phenomenon...
...And no wonder...
...According to Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor and author of the book Police Pursuit Driving, 99 times out of 100, drivers pull over when an officer flashes his lights...
...Steven Anthony Mobley, a suspect in a string of armed robberies in Atlanta's northeastern suburbs, sped off when police tried to apprehend him for questioning...
...This March, Americans were outraged to see the videotape of Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King—an episode that began with a simple speeding violation...
...And the more stressed you get, it seems, the less you think...
...in their zeal to catch their prey, they'd forgotten their sirens and lights...
...According to a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), two of every five high-speed police chases in the U.S...
...Her 54-year-old neighbor Hugh Santee, on the other hand, was a more challenging target: He was trying to cross the street...
...For the rest of the police departments across America, the chase is always on, regardless of whether the pursued has a broken taillight or a corpse hanging out of his trunk...
...The body, when confronted by the stress of fear, produces two chemicals, adrenaline and noradrenaline, which combine to produce a hyped-up sensation...
...I was pursuing a shot-fired call, heading down Benning Road onto 8th Street NE," recalls Gary Hankins, head of D.C.'s Fraternal Order of Police...
...Today, unless the suspected crime is homicide or armed robbery, only three cars can be involved: the primary pursuit vehicle, one backup, and—a critical new safeguard—a trailing car occupied by a supervising sergeant...
...Mel Gibson and Clint Eastwood never stop to ponder the consequences of chasing...
...She never heard the L.A...
...The unofficial casualty count: one dead 35-year-old woman, one seriously injured pedestrian, five scraped-up teenaged car thieves, five injured officers, three smashed blackandwhites, and at least one mangled tree...
...And then I realized what had happened...
...police officer, real life looks a lot less volatile than a Lethal Weapon sequel...
...When officers caught up with Mobley after a 40-mile chase, they found evidence linking him to the executionstyle slaying of a 24-year-old college student during the robbery of a Domino's Pizza stand a month earlier...
...There's nothing I can tell you about that," says the spokesman for the Atlanta department...
...cops crashed during high-speed chases...
...Few departments even keep records of the resulting human and property cost...
...A few months ago, three-year-old Dominique Spears was killed while playing on the quiet street where she lived...
...But only at first...
...It was Saturday night in a suburb of Los Angeles, and 19-year-old Doug Gray found himself with serious time on his hands...
...When a suspect flees by car, officers won't pursue unless failing to do so will result in "grave injury or death...
...Mind you, that doesn't mean the Baltimore force simply lets its bad guys get away...
...He began doing doughnuts with his car...
...When both cars arrived at an intersection, Fernandez flipped on his police lights and moved to make an arrest...
...And so did the LAPD...
...If they make it," he explains, "you have to...
...And to make matters worse, you've got tunnel vision...
...They had to be caught and punished— or killed, which is what happened first...
...An American police officer is more likely to die from a chase than from a bullet...
...Refusing to stop shows a lack of respect that can't be allowed to go unchallenged— even when the initial offense is a traffic violation and the resulting chase means risking lives...
...If such touchy-feely training doesn't seem very coplike, well, it isn't...
...Besides, sometimes the bad guy does get caught...
...The vast majority of high-speed chases begin with a minor traffic violation and escalate into emotionfilled, fuel-injected duels...
...To Manatee County officer Theodore Blau, who is also a police psychologist, teaching driving skills is useless without the second part of the equation: helping cops learn how to think when the adrenaline begins to pump...
...Pop goes the adrenaline again...
...Pay as you slay Insouciance about chases may be common in police departments across the country, but in the nineties, it's also going to be expensive, thanks to a new Supreme Court decision that holds cities liable for the lives that get between the cops and robbers...
...Washington's6- Reginald Baker was also taking a stroll when a stolen Nissan Pathfinder plowed into him last month, D.C...
...end in property damage...
...Road kills Almost every police officer has an anecdote like Fernandez's: a hot pursuit that ended in a heap...
...When asked for information about the property or human costs of police chases in their cities, police spokesmen all across the country had the same, terse response...
...And that's the way police logic usually works—or doesn't work—on the road...
...The adrenaline was pumping, and I was scared...
...Unfortunately, the vast majority of today's police departments aren't willing to make any distinctions at all—even when the folly of that practice is tragically apparent...
...Most don't teach their officers how to cope with the stress of high-speed chases...
...Traditionally, sovereign-immunity statutes kept cities from paying large awards to the casualties of high-speed chases...
...One in four ends in injury...
...She wouldn't get there for five months...
...Like Gray, 36-year-old Susan Tartakoff also planned to spend her Saturday night with a movie...
...Rather, it's to be smarter...
...I don't know...
...While that might be a sensible first step for the nation's departments, a smarter approach has been working for a decade in Baltimore...
...Acting on the philosophy that handling a police car, like handling a gun, requires a serious degree of caution, officers there completely rewrote their traditional policy of chase-at-all-costs...
...Both were thrown and killed...
...When someone tries to run, as Alpert observes, he commits a very serious crime— "contempt of cop...
...Then, suddenly, you're driving 100 miles per hour...
...The 68year-old Augusta man who was hit and killed after a high-speed pursuit the same weekend didn't...
...A fuse had blown in the car...
...A dangerous oversight like that doesn't mean Hankins is a lousy cop...
...It is better to allow a criminal to temporarily escape apprehension," they decided, "than to jeopardize the safety of citizens and the officer in a high-speed pursuit...
...Of course, those teenagers did break the law...
...You'll have to try somewhere else...
...It's to make the critical distinctions about what's worth going after and what's not...
...But even smarter are the few departments now asking not just how to chase, but whether the carnage is worth it in the first place...
...To the officers chasing two Augusta, Georgia, teenagers down country roads last year, it didn't seem to matter that the kids' crime was swiping $9.21 worth of gas...
...After several Rodney King-style reports, an embarrassed Dallas, Texas, began reining in its lawmen during the eighties...
...Police recruits get steeped in the technical skills of managing a car at high speeds, but when it comes to making smart decisions in a high-stress situation, cops are on their own...
...Despite the traffic passing right in front of him, Fernandez floored it, too...
...The faster you drive," Cabral says, " the less you see...
...Miami officer Louie Fernandez has been a narcotics cop for years...
...Supreme Court ruled municipalities could be held liable for injuries if plaintiffs could prove that the city employees involved were inadequately trained...
...Minutes later, just as the police gave up and flipped off their sirens, the Nissan barrelled into sevenyear-old James Gripper and his aunt...
...And far, far too many end in death: An average of 287 people died as a result of police pursuit every year during the eighties...
...To the average U.S...
...When a criminal throws down the gauntlet, asking a cop not to chase flies in the face of police culture, not to mention society's romantic expectations...
...Some departments are picking up on Manatee's stress-training courses—perhaps the easiest way to improve the odds for innocent bystanders...
...Today, Tartakoff spends most of her time in rehab—"practicing standing, crawling, and other things," she says...
...She's paralyzed from the waist down...
...To Fernandez, the decision to fly through the intersection wasn't exactly a choice...
...During times of fear, almost everybody exhibits what psychologists and physiologists have dubbed the "flight or fight" instinct...
...The Tartakoff and King cases, six years apart, may seem at first to have nothing in common...
...Cruisin' for a bruisin' Bruce Cabral spent 23 years as a New York cop before becoming director of driving instruction at Georgia's police academy...
...For weeks, you're driving 45 or 50 miles per hour, going to calls," he says...
...The Nissan kept going, the police kept chasing...
...police cars fast behind him...
...Most cops in U.S...
...Louis...
Vol. 23 • June 1991 • No. 6
