The Politics of Pursuits

Last night about 9:45 pm I flipped the TV over to Channel 9 news to see what was going on in the world and found them covering the nightly high speed pursuit. The LAPD was chasing some guy who had apparently been running for about 30 minutes now after he'd popped off a couple of shots somewhere in L.A. At the point I joined the coverage they were southbound on the I-5 in La Mirada.

Pursuits are a frequent blight on our evening news broadcasts in L.A. as the stations feel obligated to cover them from their helicopters while the anchors make breathless and stupid comments speculating what might be going on in the mind of the pursuee. Many times I've muted the TV in order to keep out the stupifying chatter. It's got to be a maddening experience for a true professional news person to have to sit there and watch those things while there is much more important news to report. However, since it's all about ratings, the real news has to wait.

When the LAPD is involved you can count on one thing - the pursuit is going to go on forever. Why? The LAPD policy forbids the use of P.I.T. manuevers (Pursuit Intervention Technique) in which the squad car, at an opportune moment, spins the pursued vehicle out. The LAPD will just follow the guy for mile after dangerous mile hoping he'll either give up out of boredom, or have some type of car problem.

As the minutes ticked by the pursuit began to move into very familiar territory. Passing Disneyland I predicted that they would be passing us in Mission Viejo within 15 minutes. Sure enough, almost to the minute we looked out our window and could see the fleet of media and law enforcement helicopters passing overhead as the pursuit made it's way past us on the nearby I-5 freeway.

After a brief exit a couple miles down the freeway the pursuit came back up north, and to our surprise and my wife's consternation, exited the freeway at La Paz, just down the hill from our house. The parade made its way up Muirlands, and had we walked a hundred yards or so from our house, we could have waved to them as they drove past. For the next several minutes the sky was filled with choppers as the pursuit made its way through some very familiar streets near our house.

It was about this point that some sanity began to interject itself and our local Sheriff's deputies took over the pursuit. Why LAPD insisted on sticking with this guy in totally unfamiliar territory instead of handing off to local law enforcement is beyond me (don't they have any supervisors?), but at last we had one of our guys in the lead. The chase didn't last too long after that.

The OCSD car made a couple of attempts to PIT the suspect, and although they couldn't find an appropriate spot, I think they did succeed in herding the guy into a gated community where he finally ran out of road in some poor guys's driveway. Normally when an LAPD chase comes to an end, they conduct a felony stop where everyone is out with guns drawn and they wait while the suspect decides whether to get out or now. Not this time. Our OCSD officer walked up to the car with his gun drawn, opened the door and jerked him out. End of pursuit.

Nice job OCSD, and fortunately the pursuit ended without violence. The LAPD has a problem with one right now in which a 13 year old was killed by officers after he rammed their police car. Of course the community is in an uproar - not about the fact that this kid apparently didn't have any parents that took responsibility for him, but because the cops shot a 13 year old.

I have a 13 year old son, and I can't imagine how I'd feel if something like that happened to him. However, my 13 year old wouldn't be out driving a car in the middle of the night. My son has parents.