Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields sent out a department-wide email notifying officers that the department will no longer chase suspects.This is the text of the email Chief Shields sent out last Friday:
Shields cited the risk to the safety of the officers and the public for each chase, and “knowing that the judicial system is largely unresponsive to the actions of the defendants.”
Good Morning,I get why she's doing that. Some critter runs from the cops, the critter's vehicle slams into some citizens and the reaction is not "why was that critter running, charge him with felony murder or some shit", but "why were the cops chasing him?" The politicians then slam the cops and now, the cops are saying that the only way to prevent other people from being hurt in chases is to not chase them, and, by the way, fuck you, Mr. Mayor, for not having our back on this, and fuck you, Mr. District Attorney, for not charging people who run.
Allow me to first say "thank you " to all of you. I know the job is difficult, perhaps now more so than ever, but I could not be prouder of the work that is done by the Atlanta Police Department. As we move into 2020, I ask that you commit yourselves to safety; both individually and to others. It is along those lines that I must revisit the department's current police pursuit "chase" policy.
I am acutely aware than an overwhelming number of crimes are committed where a vehicle is involved in some capacity; and that some of the most significant arrests we have made as an agency have been as a result of zeroing in on a specific vehicle. In reviewing the department's current pursuit policy, I must weigh these critical successes against several factors. Namely, the level of pursuit training received by officers who are engaging in the pursuits, the rate of occurrence of injury/death as a result of the pursuits and the likelihood of the judicial system according any level of accountability to the defendants arrested as a result of the pursuit. At this point and time, the department is assuming an enormous amount of risk to the safety of officers and the public for each pursuit, knowing that the judicial system is largely unresponsive to the actions of the defendants.
The Executive Command Staff will work to identify specific personnel and certain specialized pursuit training to enable the department to conduct pursuits in limited instances, but until these standards have been formalized, effective immediately, the department has a zero-chase policy. The department has a zero-chase policy and this is effective immediately.
Please know that I realize this will not be a popular decision; and more disconcerting to me personally, is that this decision may drive crime up. I get it. But at the end of the day, I want all of you to keep your jobs and to have a strong and positive career. Thank you, Chief Shields.
(Emphasis as in the original)
I submit that this is a temporary situation. I imagine that we are approaching the days when drones will take over pursuit work.
Imagine very police cruiser having a drone in a launcher, so that the drone is both fully charged and it has a running CPU with a constantly-updated GPS position. The drone would be flung into the air by the launcher, the rotor arms and rotors would pop out and away the thing goes. It'd lock onto a target vehicle or person, fly autonomously, with real-time video to a command center.
It'd fly a couple of hundred feet up and the perps might not be able to spot it. It might be an issue if the perps drive under the approach/departure path of an airport, but the drone's programming could command it to dive down low in those areas. Other drones could be launched to take over the chase before the first drone's batteries die.
In the meantime, the Chief in Atlanta is effectively telling people that they might consider looking to their own safety. For in Atlanta, for now, the bad guys can both run and hide.
5 comments:
My local TV station pops up police chases from Los Angeles at every opportunity, putting them up on Facebook. The protocol there is simply to follow the perps at a reasonable distance, with multiple vehicles, and follow them for hours and hours if necessary. There may be high speeds involved on expressways, but that's generally not what happens on other roads. The chasees eventually simply give up and pull over, and the police order them, still from a safe distance, to exit the vehicle, walk backwards towards them, and lie face down. And apropos of your drone idea, there are police helicopters in the air to keep them spotted when the chase cars lose sight. (and multiple news copters as well; I'm surprised there aren't mid-air collisions, not surface collisions). All this seems to work well and be reasonably safe.
From the one experience I had in overflying a hot news situation, the news helos were on their own air-to-air frequency. I'll bet that there is an agreement, formal or not that the news helos and the LAPD Airships operate at different altitudes.
Don't forget license plate readers. Those fuckers are all over the place now, and not all of them belong to the cops.
-Doug in Oakland
This will be unpopular with police because high speed pursuits are the most fun thing a cop gets to do. But it always seemed unnecessary to me. You can't outrun radio or hide from helicopters or license plate readers, as din noted. Soon the big tag reader database will tie together all the little ones and every vehicle location will be known at all times. I like the don't-chase policy. Probably more successful bank robberies will happen but fewer traffic deaths.
Comrade, in more than one of those I watched a helicopter came across directly in front of the helicopter it was being broadcast from. I have this image, perhaps unjustified, of newsies caught up in the chase. I hope not.
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