After observing a traffic violation or being alerted to a suspicious person or vehicle, a police officer can signal a driver to stop. Usually, the driver will pull over and the situation will end without further incident. However, on rare occasions, the driver will refuse to stop or take evasive action and flee. In such situations the police officer must decide whether or not to pursue, bearing in mind that if a driver refuses to stop the agency’s pursuit policy attaches, and the officer must therefore take into account both policy and training before reaching a decision. Accordingly, the officer must balance both the risks and the potential benefits when deciding whether or not a pursuit is necessary.
A pursuit can be initiated when a suspect refuses to obey an officer’s order to stop. The fleeing suspect is likely to become erratic and a danger to anyone in the vicinity. Under these conditions, when a police officer decides to chase the suspect, his or her driving is also fast, often dangerous, and presents an additional risk to the public. That is, the risks of a chase not only include the police officer and the suspect, but they also involve the public in an interactive triangle.
This interactive triangle is made up of (1) the officer, who is trying to apprehend a suspect; (2) the police vehicle; and (3) the environment, which includes the fleeing suspect, traffic, and pedestrians, all of which are forces brought into play in this interaction. The suspect’s goal is to remain free and avoid arrest and, unless he has a death wish, he will often run until he believes he is safe, or crashes (Alpert 1997). The suspect, who has refused to heed the commands of the officer, has the primary responsibility to stop the chase by pulling over. The suspect is also directing the pursuit by selecting the course, speed, and recklessness of the driving. However, any increased recklessness on the part of the suspect may be affected by the officer’s attempt to apprehend him. The officer’s natural desire to apprehend the suspect must be tempered by concerns for public safety. Because of the nature of pursuits, the suspect is necessarily influenced psychologically by the officer’s actions.
The goal of the officer is to apprehend the suspect and make the arrest. Accordingly, it is the officer who must become aware of personal capabilities and take into account environmental conditions that may affect his or her ability to accomplish the mission of police, which is to protect lives. The police officer must factor into the decision-making process the risk created by the suspect’s driving; the potential actions of innocent bystanders, passengers, and others who may become involved; and how his or her actions influence the suspect’s driving. In addition, the likelihood of apprehension must be factored into the decision to continue or not to continue a chase.
The officer must understand that when a suspect refuses to stop for the emergency lights and siren, a routine encounter turns quickly into a high-risk and dangerous event where a show of authority may affect the suspect’s driving. If the suspect becomes more reckless than before or refuses to stop, it is the officer, based on policy and training, who must determine the value of continuing the pursuit and the risk of the pursuit. The officer and the supervisor must also understand the influence of the chase on the participants. The need to win and make that arrest is often influenced by the adrenaline rush felt by the officer. A pursuit is an exciting event and involves one person running to escape and another chasing to catch. If it continues, it resembles a drag race until one party terminates it or there is a crash.
Balancing Law Enforcement with Public Safety
The purpose of pursuit is to apprehend a suspect within the mission of police—to protect lives. Tactics and activities undertaken must consider apprehension secondary to public safety. One way to help officers understand this balance is to have them apply the same standards used in weighing the alternatives to firing a weapon in a situation where innocent bystanders may be endangered. Whenever an officer fires a weapon, he or she must be concerned that the bullet may accidentally hit an unintended target. By comparison, in pursuit, the officer has not only his or her vehicle to worry about, but also must consider the pursued vehicle, which is creating dangerous situations, and other vehicles, which may also be creating danger by attempting to get out of the way (Alpert and Fridell 1992).
Pursuit driving has historically been available to the police in the fight against crime. Unfortunately, the inherent nature of pursuit creates a significant danger to the officers, law violators, and the general public. Whether or not this danger and the resulting property damage, injuries, and deaths are worth the benefits is the question police administrators and courts have been examining for years. One appropriate response has been to limit pursuits to situations in which a fleeing suspect is suspected of a violent felony (Alpert 1997). By limiting pursuits to these serious felonies, the police are able to use their skills to attempt to apprehend the most serious criminals while protecting the public from risk created by chases for traffic and other minor offenses and limiting their exposure to lawsuits.
Pursuit Driving and Liability
As a general proposition, lawsuits involving pursuits are brought in either state court or federal court. Actions brought in a state court are commonly called “tort” actions. Actions brought under Title 42, Section 1983, of the U.S. Code will require a showing of violation of a federally protected constitutional or statutory right. Whether a cause of action is based on state tort or on Section 1983, the allegations of the plaintiff must establish responsibility on the part of the pursuit vehicle operator or the employing agency (see Alpert et al. 2000).
Responsibility of the operator is usually based on an allegation of some variety of negligence or on some greater degree of culpability. The responsibility of the employing agency may be based on a showing of failure to provide meaningful policy or adequate training. Because these federal claims are very difficult to prove and are relatively rare, we will focus on state claims.
Actions brought against an officer or the employing agency under state law are generally based on allegations of negligence, although some actions may be framed in terms of intentional acts of the officer. The legal formula for negligence can be summarized as follows:
1. A duty or obligation, recognized by the law, requiring the person to conform to a certain standard of conduct, for the protection of others against unreasonable risks
2. A failure on the person’s part to conform to the standard required: a breach of the duty
3. A reasonably close causal connection between the conduct and the resulting injury; this is commonly known as legal cause or proximate cause, and includes the notion of cause in fact
4. Actual loss or damage resulting to the interests of another
From a practical standpoint, negligence in an emergency vehicle response may come about in any number of ways, including the three following representative situations:
1. An officer violates an applicable state statute that creates a duty to act or not act.
2. An officer violates pertinent department policy that creates a duty to act or not act.
3. An officer violates an established duty to use “due care” generally.
Regardless of whether the tort alleged involves an intentional or negligent act, a plaintiff may not recover for injury if there was no duty owed to the plaintiff by the officer who caused the injury. The term duty, as used here, means that there was some obligation recognized by the law to behave in a particular fashion toward the person who was ultimately injured. The law recognizes generally that if there was no duty to the injured on the part of a law enforcement officer, then there can be no responsibility on the part of the officer or the employer for payment of monetary compensation, known as “damages,” or any other type of relief to the injured party.
Conclusion
Pursuit driving is one tactic that police have relied on for the apprehension of suspects. Until the 1980s, very little was known about the risks and benefits of pursuit. Today, the known risks and limited benefits have convinced many progressive police administrators to restrict their agencies’ pursuit policies and provide decision-making training to officers. The trend that began in the 1990s and continues today includes an agency pursuit plan involving a policy, training, supervision, and accountability.
Research has demonstrated the need for a strong policy that takes most decisions away from officers who must make split-second decisions in the heat of a chase. Comparing pursuits to the use of firearms clearly demonstrates the potential deadly consequences of such actions. In fact, the more that is learned about pursuit, the more the tactic is controlled. Data from studies show that approximately 40% of pursuits result in crashes, 20% end in injuries, and 1% end in death. Although it is difficult to tell young police officers that they cannot chase a person who would not stop for them, it is more difficult to explain to a person that his family member was injured or killed in a pursuit for a traffic or property offense. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Policy Center published a model policy and a policy concepts and issues paper evaluating pursuit driving. While they maintained a middle-of-the-road posture, they have summarized the indisputable need for reform (IACP Policy Center 1990, 1-2).
The policy issue confronting law enforcement and municipal administrators is a familiar one of balancing conflicting interests: on one side there is the need to apprehend known offenders. On the other side, there is the safety of law enforcement officers, of fleeing drivers and their passengers, and of innocent bystanders.
The model policy is relatively restrictive, particularly in prohibiting pursuit where the offense in question would not warrant an arrest. Most traffic violations, therefore, would not meet these pursuit requirements. It is recognized that many law enforcement officers and administrators may find this prohibition difficult to accept and implement, particularly where a more permissive policy has been traditionally accepted.
In this critical area of pursuit driving, law enforcement administrators must therefore be prepared to make difficult decisions based on the cost and benefits of these types of pursuits to the public they serve.
