Houston injuries and fatalities related to police pursuits remain inconsistently and under reported. In fact, pursuit related crashes get under reported throughout the nation. Estimates place the number of reported police pursuit related crashes at less than half of those that actually occur. For instance, a police office can decide that the pursuit actually terminated just before the crash. Then he can report the crash as having a more ordinary cause.
In the absence of reliable data, estimates place the number of police pursuit related fatalities on the road between 350 and 2,500 per year, with 55,000 or more annual injuries. (Indeed, the writer of this article lost a favorite cousin to a police pursuit related crash. My cousin Paul was in his car on his way to work at H.E.B. in San Antonio. He was stopped at a light when a suspect the police pursued at high speed flew off the overpass above and landed on my cousin’s car. Paul was instantly crushed. The suspect turned out to have about an ounce of marijuana on him if I recall correctly. It was an unnecessary loss.)
In fact, a car wreck, fatal or otherwise, constitutes the most frequent ending to an urban police pursuit of a fleeing suspect in a vehicle. The wrecks take the lives of some pursuing officer. In about 2/3 of the wrecks, the fleeing suspect dies. In another 33% to 40%, the victims who die are completely innocent victims who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Police officers faced with a possible pursuit situation have to balance the need for public safety against the need to apprehend the suspect. Does the value of apprehending that particular suspect outweigh the danger to the public from the possible pursuit? Obviously, the police often can’t know the answer until after they’ve apprehended the suspect. In my cousin Paul’s case, the answer was clearly “no.” But maybe they couldn’t know that in advance.
High-speed police chases become dangerous very quickly. In about 50% of the chases that result in crashes, that crash happens in the first two minutes of the police pursuit. Over 70% of pursuit-related crashes occur within the first six minutes of pursuit.
Go to Part 2.