SUV hits Little Rock church, injures 4-year-old boy inside

A woman who fled from Little Rock officers in a stolen car Wednesday crashed the vehicle into a church and injured a child, police said.

Police said that about 9:40 a.m., an officer at West Roosevelt Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive tried to stop a 2001 Chevrolet Tahoe that had been reported stolen in the city hours earlier.

The driver of the SUV, identified by police as Chantae Burton, 21, pulled over and let one of two passengers out of the vehicle before fleeing east on West Roosevelt Road, according to police spokesman officer Steve Moore. An officer reportedly chased the vehicle for less than a mile, then lost sight of it around South Spring Street.

The chase came after the Little Rock Police Department recently implemented new vehicle pursuit guidelines — the second change in those guidelines in as many years.

Moore said the officer Wednesday was searching for the vehicle on Interstate 30 when Burton crashed the SUV into House of Bethesda Christian Faith Church at 2616 Springer Blvd. Moore said police were not actively chasing the vehicle when the crash occurred.

The SUV hit a 4- yearold boy inside the church. Moore said the boy, who became stuck under the vehicle, was taken to an area hospital where he underwent surgery for a bone fracture.

Moore said there were no other serious injuries.

Burton and a passenger fled the crash on foot, according to reports. Officers located the two in the 1000 block of East 30th Street, reports said.

Burton was arrested and charged with theft by receiving, fleeing, leaving the scene of an accident with injury, and reckless driving.

The passenger was not charged.

In 2016, Little Rock police banned officers from chasing any driver suspected of a nonviolent, nonfelony offense, with the exception of home burglary suspects. That policy, as Police Chief Kenton Buckner described it, prohibited most chases of stolen vehicles.

Little Rock police revised the policy last month. The department loosened pursuit guidelines to allow officers to chase anyone suspected of committing any felony. The latest revision of the policy, officially known as General Order 302, also allows an officer to begin a chase “if the actions of the suspect intentionally puts the public at risk.”

Buckner said he loosened the chase protocol in response to an increase in crime that began in late 2016 and has continued this year.

For instance, as of Monday afternoon, 67 people have been injured by gunfire in Little Rock this year, a 91 percent increase as compared with the 35 people hurt by gunfire during the same period last year, according to department data.

Homicides are also up in Little Rock compared with last year. Little Rock had logged 17 homicides as of Wednesday afternoon, compared with nine homicides during the same time period in 2016.

Buckner said officers had become frustrated over what they perceived as a “sense of lawlessness” under the previous pursuit policy. He said drivers had taunted police by squealing their vehicles’ tires and driving erratically, knowing that officers could not chase them over minor offenses.

“It was very apparent that the criminals felt emboldened,” he said.

Police tightened pursuit guidelines after the department recorded 162 chases in 2015, more than triple the number of chases logged in previous years. Police had also recorded a high number of chases that involved crashes.

In one of those crashes, a man fleeing police in a stolen car careened onto a sidewalk and struck two women. Trendia Horton, 39, was killed. Her daughter, Nahtali, who was 18 at the time, was in a coma for months afterward.

Last year, under the more restrictive pursuit policy, the number of police chases decreased to 50. It was the fewest number of chases police recorded in at least eight years. The number of chases that involved crashes also decreased from 37 previously to six.

Although the department relaxed the chase policy last month, many longstanding guidelines related to chases remain in place.

Officers involved in chases are required to activate patrol cars’ emergency signals; only two police vehicles are allowed to be directly involved in a chase; a police vehicle cannot be used to ram another vehicle or to create a roadblock; and police supervisors must consider environmental factors, such as weather and traffic, in determining whether “the necessity of apprehension is outweighed by the level of danger.”

The latest chase policy is still more restrictive than pursuit guidelines that were in place for many years before 2016. Those guidelines allowed officers to begin chases at their discretion under broad circumstances. An Arkansas Democrat-Gazette review of police chases in 2010 and 2011 found that officers mostly chased people suspected of minor offenses and often listed “suspicious activity” as the reason for beginning a chase.

A separate review of chases between 2009 and 2015 found that more than 1 in 4 chases resulted in crashes.

Buckner described the chase policy in those years as “very, very liberal.” He said changes in 2016 made the policy highly restrictive, and the latest revision moves it “back to the center.”