The Washington State Patrol is frustrated with Washington’s relatively new law that greatly limits when police officers can engage in a chase. The State Patrol is also reporting nearly a thousand cases of drivers refusing to stop for state troopers, but chase deaths have dropped dramatically. Law enforcement agencies across Washington are currently trying to amend the law.
Washington’s state police force sent a montage video KOMO News in Seattle among the worst unproductive incidents. The footage includes the suspects primarily speeding on the highway beyond the speed limit and weaving through traffic to get out of the patrol vehicle. The State Patrol Agency claims it’s a massive increase in failure productivity despite the fact that the statistics weren’t recorded prior to this year. This is a blatant attempt to stir public opinion on the matter despite only one fatal chase since the law was enacted in June 2021. 11 people have died in chases. Washington police from June 2020 to June 2021.
HB 1054, the law in question, requires that the situation meet one of two criteria before police can initiate a vehicle pursuit:
- “There may be reason to believe that a person in the vehicle has committed or is committing a violent or sexual offense.”
- “There is a reasonable suspicion that a person in the vehicle has committed or is committing the act of driving in an influence offense.”
Enoka Herat, Immigration and Police Practice Advisor for the American Civil Liberties Union told KOMO“The pursuit of these vehicles is inherently dangerous, and they put all of our lives at risk. If a chase happened here, we could be victims of that. “Risk is not hypothetical. Last year, I wrote about a completely unnecessary chase in Colorado that killed two innocent people. The suspect ran to a stop sign and crashed into a car, killing a 21-year-old passenger with cancer. Then, the suspect killed a pedestrian who was walking on the sidewalk.
Honestly, I would be appalled if my local police department informed me that multiple eyewitnesses were killed in the pursuit that resulted in the recovery of a stolen vehicle from me. No one can convince me that my fortune is worth more than the life of an innocent person. There are various methods to catch a suspect on the run without pursuit, such as GPS tracking, tailing a helicopter or wearing a mask.warning text.
