THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 14, 1995 TAG: 9509130145
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: John Pruitt
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines
Once again a high-speed police chase has ended tragically, and once again the question is whether the public was more endangered than protected by those charged with maintaining public safety.
I have no standing to answer the question, but I do believe it's in the best interest of everyone, including the police, to ask the question - and keep asking it.
Only then will police come to sensible policies that challenge what a Virginia State Police officer once described as the ``Smokey and the Bandit type approach'' to pursuits, an approach that too often has a fatal outcome.
The latest local incident - a chase that started after an armed robbery in Chesapeake and that had a bizarre, fiery ending in Suffolk - occurred after midnight Monday.
At least that much was fortunate, for few citizens travel the involved route - including narrow, sometimes winding, Suffolk roads - at that hour. This well could have saved some lives or prevented injuries to innocent motorists.
Monday's chase could as easily have happened at the peak of work-bound traffic. That's scary.
Would police - in as many as 10 cars at a time - still have pursued the man on Route 17, Shoulders Hill Road, Nansemond Parkway, Wilroy Road, Constance Road and Holland Road?
What could other motorists have done to have gotten out of harm's way, particularly when the fleeing car sometimes traveled in the wrong direction? Pulled over, perhaps, into roadside ditches and risked injury there? Held their breaths and prayed that the high-speed motorcade could maneuver around them?
What kind of choices are they, particularly to be imposed by the very people whose job it is to keep our roadways safe?
Still, this was a tough call. Here's a guy who allegedly held up a pizza store in Chesapeake and, if not stopped, presumably wouldn't mind sticking a gun in someone else's face, or even pulling the trigger, for a few bucks. It's not the kind of person we want on the loose.
So that means 10 cop cars should get into a three-city pursuit suitable for high-adventure television? Hardly! It means that a supervisor should evaluate whether the chase can be conducted safely and whether it will end satisfactorily, with an apprehension.
That's not as easy as it might seem. A Feb. 13 report by Staff Writer Jon Frank of The Virginian-Pilot, citing studies of police reports in three states, said that up to 39 percent of police chases result in collisions and that at least one in 100 ends fatally.
That involved California, Illinois and Michigan, but the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration also said 924 people died in pursuit-related collisions from 1989 to 1991. The overwhelming majority - 739 - were in the vehicles being pursued, nine were police officers and more than 170 were innocent third-party victims.
And locally? There are plenty of news clips detailing disasters. Just from this year: ``Robbery suspect fleeing police chase crashes,'' April; ``Fleeing motorcyclist hits tree,'' May; ``Suffolk man hospitalized after chase crash,'' June.
Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina professor who has studied police pursuits for 10 years and who has written two books on them, said in the February story, ``These things are very, very dangerous, regardless of length and speed.''
In Monday's chase, two police cars were damaged, and suspect James M. Morris was burned severely when he tried to set his wrecked car on fire. Mr. Morris could have prevented all of it from happening. Still, there is the matter of what police might have prevented. MEMO: Your comments are welcome: call 934-7553.
by CNB