Police chases are rarely worth risk
No need for pursuits, given the extent of CCTV, GPS tracking and other technology
Police chases are a lethal risk to the public, to cops, to fleeing drivers and to their passengers.
Given the extent of CCTV coverage, GPS tracking, even facial recognition technology and satellite imagery these days, there’s little urgency to pursue at speed in the moment, unless there’s a damn good reason to believe a serious crime has been committed or may about to be committed. And arguably not even then.
Death and severe injury are just too high a price to pay, even for alleged felons.
Suspects don’t just vanish into the ether, never to be found. They leave a trail. Sometimes they leave carnage, wrecked vehicles where drivers had the misfortune to cross paths with tearaways at the wheel and pedestrians struck down in the lam.
On March 7, in Kirkland Lake, a 76-year-old bystander was injured in a “suspect apprehension pursuit” by the OPP. In that occurrence, initiated by a traffic stop, the driver took off and police gave chase. A 26-year-old suspect was shot dead in an exchange of gunfire and a second suspect fled on foot. Two men were ultimately arrested on drug-related offences.
This past Wednesday, in what may or may not have been a chase — the details haven’t yet been confirmed — the driver of a stolen Mercedes SUV was killed and another motorist critically injured in a horrific multi-vehicle pileup in Scarborough. “It started around 6:30 a.m. when Toronto Police Service officers attempted to stop the driver of a vehicle,” Special Investigations Unit spokesperson Kristy Denette told reporters at the scene. “So, the driver fled at a high rate of speed and (it) ended at the intersection of Markham Road and Milner Avenue.”
The SUV flipped onto its roof, the driver rushed to hospital, where he was pronounced dead. But six vehicles were involved in the crash and a man driving a Honda Odyssey was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries. Two others suffered minor injuries and a fifth person was treated at the scene by paramedics.
The SIU has invoked its mandate to investigate whenever death or serious injuries occur in the province involving officers and civilians.
Whether an actual chase sparked the havoc is one of the issues under investigation.
“Based on initial information, officers did not initiate a pursuit (chase after) the driver of the SUV,” Denette told the Star in an email on Friday.
“There are many questions to answer through this process,” said Denette. “Was there indeed no pursuit, what speed were they travelling, were they following the rules of the road, were the car lights/ sirens activated, did the vehicle take off and they came upon the collision later, how far away was the collision later, how far away was the collision from where the initial stop was initiated?”
It was reported by witnesses that in this case they saw the southbound SUV speed through a red light and collide with a Nissan making a left turn, which propelled the SUV into the air before it smashed into other vehicles.
Neither the deceased nor the critically injured individual have been identified by police, as of this writing.
Three investigators, a collision reconstructionist and two forensic investigators assigned to the case are gathering evidence, interviewing officers and witnesses, collecting surveillance footage from nearby businesses and reviewing any police in-car camera footage. Evidence doesn’t always align with what is initially told to the SIU.
Last November, 17 charges were laid against a 26-year-old London man after a near-miss involving a police cruiser which led to a chase that spanned two counties. It came to an end when the driver — one of the charges was impaired operation of a vehicle — slammed into a boat parked in a lot off the highway.
And the following month, a pair of Toronto officers were struck, one sustaining minor injuries, by a man driving a stolen U-Haul. In that chase it was later revealed the driver and two other suspects had allegedly abducted an individual from a nearby apartment and forced the victim into the U-Haul. That person was still in the vehicle when the driver jumped out of the vehicle and attempted to run away on foot.
It’s a fine balance of risks, often made in split seconds, to chase. In Ontario, pursuit guidelines — altered at the turn of the millennium — compel an officer to consider three factors before deciding to engage in a chase: Reason to believe a criminal offence has been or is about to take place; no alternatives to a chase are apparent; and where preventing harm to the public by apprehending the driver outweighs the risk to the public in doing so.
I covered a case in 2007 where two teenage girls were killed when the taxi in which they were riding was slammed by a vehicle travelling at high speed while being chased by Toronto police. The driver of the stolen car, a 15-year-old boy, died in hospital hours later. “Why is it that police have to chase in the middle of traffic, causing this boy to kill himself and kill my child?” the mother of one of the girl’s sobbed to the Star afterwards. “This boy did something wrong, but he didn’t deserve to die because of it and my daughter didn’t deserve to die because of it. Three people dead!”
Chases have been historically justified by alarmist scenarios that involve violent assailants, murderers and robbers, burning rubber to shake off cops because the person fleeing has something serious to hide. It’s a panicked reaction.
In practice, the overwhelming majority of pursuits arise from property crimes, theft, drug possession, joy riding in a stolen vehicle, far too often by teenagers, or an inebriated motorist acting stupidly.
When the issue was studied in Canada — more than two decades ago — only 0.5 per cent of the nearly 15,000 police chases that occurred over a six-year period resulted in homicide-related charges; just 1.4 per cent were for serious violent crimes.
By comparison, 35.8 per cent related to theft or possession, or both, of stolen property and 32.4 per cent were for Criminal Code traffic violations. The vast majority of drivers were under the age of 25.
An American study around the same time found that innocent bystanders accounted for a third of those killed in high-speed chases, while a separate U.S. analysis of statistics concluded that nearly 40 per cent of chases result in crashes. Police officers were at particularly high risk of being killed or injured during a pursuit.
Some U.S. jurisdictions — local police departments in most states can set their own protocols — have banned chases outright. Others forbid roadblocks or blocking-in of a fleeing vehicle. In Miami-Dade County in Florida, for example, highly restrictive chase regulations resulted in pursuits dropping from 279 to 51 in one year, with a corresponding decrease in deaths and injuries. Alternatives to chases include laying out spike belts that deflate tires at controlled rates and deployment of police helicopters.
In Toronto, police chases are banned downtown, whatever the circumstances.
But police have a duty of care to the public, which means being judicious about engaging in pursuits and justifying them afterwards — when it’s sometimes too late. Courts have increasingly been holding police departments liable when an innocent civilian is killed or hurt.
The SIU statistics on Ontario police officers charged in relation to a chase only go back to 2017. There have been none for vehicle deaths and seven for vehicle injuries, some charged with multiple offences. An SIU data search for the Star this week turned up just one involving Toronto police: A cruiser collision with a bicyclist in 2017, resulting in serious injuries to the man.
Vehicles are lethal. Vehicles chased by police are even more lethal. Let them flee because apprehending a suspected criminal in the moment can’t justify loss of life.
It’s just not worth it.