Dorothy Wright and her two grandchildren never got to church. The driver of a stolen SUV who was trying to escape a police pursuit smashed into Wright’s car at an intersection in southwest Atlanta on Sunday morning, killing her and the two children.
The suspect escaped on foot.
Three days earlier, an elderly couple returning home from a birthday dinner in Gwinnett County were also killed in a high-speed chase. A car that police had pulled over for a possible equipment violation took off, and two minutes later, it crashed into a car containing Elzbieta Gurtler-Krawczynska and her husband, Kryzysztof Krawczynski.
Five innocent people killed in a span of a few days, and for no good reason.
I’m not trying to bash law enforcement. I have no doubt that the officers involved in the two tragedies are distraught at how things turned out, and there’s no indication yet that the chases violated department policies, although investigations naturally continue.
But in the calm light of day, when we can think it through without the cloud of adrenaline and testosterone, we do have to ask ourselves: Is the recovery of an SUV worth putting the lives of innocent people at risk? The chase that ended in the death of a grandmother and two children covered at least a dozen miles on a Sunday morning; disaster could have happened at any point along that route. Even in the Gwinnett County case, where two suspects were captured and charged with serious drug-related crimes in addition to vehicular homicide, does their apprehension justify the risks taken to do so?
The data tell us no:
- Since 1979, more than 5,000 innocent bystanders or passengers and 139 police officers have been killed in chases; 6,300 fleeing drivers have also died, according to a report by USA Today. The actual numbers are probably higher, but as with police-involved shootings, we have no comprehensive national database of police chases.
- According to another study looking at data from 1994-2002, more than 47 percent of fleeing drivers were drug- or alcohol-impaired. (The driver in last week's Gwinnett tragedy was charged with DUI). You could argue that such numbers justify police pursuit, because those drivers need to be taken off the road. But do you really want impaired individuals at the wheel in a high-speed pursuit situation?
- More than 90 percent of high-speed chases are initiated for non-violent crimes; almost half begin with a traffic violation.
- Once initiated, some 25 percent to 40 percent of chases end when the suspect crashes into something. As we've seen, that "something" can be a pedestrian, a biker, a tree or retaining wall or a grandmother on her way to church with her grandchildren.
So it comes down to a balancing test. Yes, we can worry that if violators know they won’t be pursued, they might become emboldened. But we have five fresh reminders that high-speed pursuits put innocent people at risk of death or serious injury. That leads to a conclusion that in cases involving violent crime or danger to human life, high-speed pursuit should remain an option. But in cases of property crime and traffic violations, the scales swing heavily against it. What we stand to lose is much greater than what we stand to gain.
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