When police chases turn deadly
At least 16 people in Connecticut died in police pursuits over a six-year period
At least 16 Connecticut residents died as a result of police chases from 2017 through 2022, an investigation by Hearst Newspapers shows, while dozens more were injured during that time.
Some victims were suspects fleeing police, while others were bystanders caught in the wrong place when a vehicle being chased veered off the road or swerved into oncoming traffic.
In some of these cases, officers pursued people they suspected of violent offenses. But in others, they chased suspects who did not appear to pose an active threat to officers or to the public. Some deadly chases began with simple traffic stops before drivers sped away, prompting a pursuit.
While blame for these deadly crashes has often fallen on fleeing suspects, some advocates say officers contribute to the accidents by escalating pursuits in situations when doing so is not necessary — sometimes in violation of state or department standards.
“There seems to be a premium put on property over people,” said David McGuire, executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut. “These chases are way too prevalent, and many times they’re because of something like a stolen car.”
The issue isn’t unique to Connecticut. The San Francisco Chronicle — which is part of Hearst Newspapers, along with CT Insider — spent a year compiling a national database of fatal police chases using data from news reports, private research groups and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The Chronicle’s investigation found at least 3,336 deaths stemming from police chases across the country between between 2017 and 2022. The data showed that police often escalated minor interactions into dangerous and ultimately deadly chases.
In many places, the Chronicle found, vague or permissive policies allow officers wide latitude to pursue suspects when they choose. Even when officers
have violated their departments’ policies, Hearst Newspapers found that they typically face only light discipline, if any.
In Connecticut, traffic deaths stemming from police chases have resulted from crashes or collisions involving suspects, not officers, and surviving suspects have often been charged with manslaughter and other offenses stemming from the incidents. During the period in question, no officer appears to have been charged with a crime related to a deadly pursuit, and it’s unclear if any have been meaningfully disciplined.
Many of these deadly crashes came before December 2019, when the state’s Police Officer Standards and Training Council adopted a new, stricter standard about when officers can pursue suspects. But at least three happened after the change, Hearst Newspapers found.
State data indicates that while the policy change has reduced the number of highspeed police pursuits, officers continue to pursue suspects for a broad range of offenses. To some advocates, this suggests departments have not meaningfully enforced the new standard.
Michael Lawlor sits on the POST Council. He said police chiefs he trusts have told him the statewide pursuit policy is “flagrantly violated.”
Lawlor pointed to a chase in Colchester on Feb. 16. According to an incident report, state police pursued a suspect for 21 miles, reaching speeds over 135 mph, because his car looked like one that had fled the scene of a crash.
Officials ultimately determined the car wasn’t involved in the crash, but the man behind the wheel was not allowed to drive as a condition of his parole. The suspect is awaiting arraignment on a handful of charges.
A spokesperson for the Connecticut State Police said the incident is still under review.
Lawlor said the incident is just one example of officers ignoring
the state’s pursuit policy, potentially putting other motorists in danger and risking expensive lawsuits in the process.
“The downside of ignoring the policy is that you’ll get the legislature to impose limitations that you will not like,” said Lawlor, a former Democratic state representative who co-chaired the legislature’s Judiciary Committee. “That’s what will happen.”
A new policy
In 2019, following several high-profile incidents in which officers shot at fleeing suspects, Connecticut state lawmakers passed a bill, signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont, requiring police departments to record all instances of pursuits and providing for the development of a statewide minimum standard regarding when chases are appropriate.
Under the resulting standard, police may pursue drivers only if they believe they have committed or are actively committing a violent crime, or if there are “exigent circumstances” that require someone be apprehended immediately. Once a chase has begun, they must “continuously reassess” whether to continue the pursuit.
Keith Mello, chief of the Milford Police Department and chair of the state’s POST Council, said the new policy attempts to balance the danger of highspeed chases against the need to apprehend suspects.
“We’re not continuing pursuit for motor vehicle offenses and property and nonviolent crimes” unless there are exigent circumstances, Mello said. “That alone isn’t a justification.”
At the time the new standard was introduced, one researcher from Sacred Heart University found, most pursuits were in response not to violent crime but to property crime and motor vehicle infractions. Has that changed since the policy took effect?
Based on the available data, it’s hard to say.
After recording 739 pursuits in 2019, POST reported only 281 in 2021 and 445 in 2022 (with no data available for 2020), suggesting a significant drop. Those
figures, however, are notably incomplete, missing data from the Connecticut State Police, among other departments.
Even still, POST recorded 30 crashes stemming from pursuits in 2021, five of which caused injury, and 44 in 2022, 15 of which caused injury.
Over the two-year period, officers reported initiating 135 pursuits in response to violent crimes but also 408 in response to motor vehicle violations, 114 in response to property crimes and 19 in response to “suspicious behavior.”
McGuire, from the ACLU of Connecticut, argues lawmakers and state officials can do more, both to limit the circumstances when pursuits are legal and to enforce the policy currently in place.
As he sees it, an officer’s failure to follow the state’s pursuits policy warrants serious consequences, including suspension or firing.
“We continue to really not have a lot of confidence that some of the either state laws or department policies are really being complied with,” McGuire said. “A lot of these provisions don’t have enforceability, they don’t have teeth in them.”
Mello said POST doesn’t monitor whether officers follow the policy, noting that responsibility for enforcement falls to local departments.
Paul Melanson, chief of the Avon Police Department and president of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, offered several explanations for why pursuits for non-violent offenses have continued even under the new policy.
In some instances, he said, officers may pursue someone who has committed a property crime or traffic violation if that person is also a suspect in a violent crime. In other cases, departments may be liberal in how they define pursuits — reporting instances when, for example, someone doesn’t immediately notice an officer is seeking to pull them over and continues driving.
Melanson said Connecticut police departments have generally taken the new policy seriously and adapted their practices accordingly. He called the idea that departments fail to enforce
their new policies “completely false.”
“I’m not gonna say that it’s not that it’s not going to happen,” Melanson said, referring to pursuits that violate department policy. “But I would say if it did happen, it would be corrected, remediated, and the individual officer, should it happen again, would be disciplined.”
Steve Errante, an attorney who has represented victims of police chases, including in front of the Connecticut Supreme Court, said the new standard seems to have reduced injuries and deaths stemming from pursuits — but not entirely eliminated them.
“This type of incident is way less common than it was,” he said. “But clearly it still happens.”
‘We have to have a level of caution’
On the morning of August 10, 2017, Marline Adesokan was driving her SUV through a construction zone in her home town of Bloomfield, with her son and daughter strapped in the back seat.
She was attempting to take a left turn when, according to a lawsuit she would later file, a speeding Bloomfield police officer attempted to pass her on her left, causing a collision. According to the suit, Adesokan suffered several ligament sprains and other injuries, some of which caused permanent damage.
In the summer of 2019, Adesokan sued the town of Bloomfield, the local police department and the officer who collided with her, seeking $15,000 in relief. After a judge ruled against her, declaring the officer immune from liability, Adesokan appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court, which reversed the initial decision, sending the case back to a lower court for trial.
Adesokan’s attorney, John Sodipo, said this isn’t his first case involving officers driving recklessly and causing harm to bystanders.
“The police have a job to do, to protect and serve. I understand that,” Sodipo said in an interview last week. “But in doing so, I think the onus is also
upon them that when they’re in pursuit or they’re trying to get somewhere, that due care is taken.”
A Bloomfield police spokesperson declined to comment on Adesokan’s suit. Each of the defendants in the lawsuit denied responsibility for Adesokan’s injuries, and in court filings, the town argued Adesokan’s claims lacked evidence, relying on “illogical reasoning and baseless conclusions.”
In recent years, the state Supreme Court has weighed in on several cases involving police pursuits, ruling a Seymour officer immune after a 15-year-old died in a collision stemming from a pursuit but, in a separate case, holding a Hartford officer liable after he crashed an unmarked car into a suspect’s motorcycle, causing serious injuries.
In 2022, the state legislature passed a bill that would have limited immunity for officers in police pursuits – but which was vetoed by Lamont, who viewed it as overly broad.
Other serious crashes did not result in lawsuits. In August 2017, a 61-year-old Bridgeport woman died when her car was struck by another vehicle attempting to flee police.
Months later, a 54-year-old man from Seymour died when another suspect chased by officers crossed a double-yellow line and collided with him head on. Less than two weeks after that, a 3-year-old boy died after a teenager fleeing a traffic stop drove onto the sidewalk where he and his family stood.
In each of these cases, the suspect fleeing police was charged with and convicted of crimes, leading to prison sentences exceeding a decade.
The law enforcement agencies involved in these pursuits either declined to comment for this story or did not return requests for comment.
As Sodipo sees it, tragedies like these didn’t have to happen — no one had to get hurt, no one had to die and no one had to wind up in prison.
“This isn’t a bashing-the-police situation. Quite the contrary,” he said. “But we have to have a standard and a level of caution to protect the public at large.”