For those of you in active law enforcement or explorers or those that just know, I'm curious to see what the different pursuit policies are out there.

 

I am an active LEO and my agencies policy is that we can only pursue for "active, violent, felonies". Which now-a -days pretty much means we don't pursue. It can be stretched if I have a supervisor on shift and he is able to make the call to pursue or not but my city and the county I work in is crazy populated so therefore.... pursuits are few and far in between. Now, I am able to toss Stop Sticks out and hope they bail shortly thereafter but that rarely happens hah.

 

There are many ups and downs to this because now, Johnny Scumbag knows that we cannot chase and therefore takes off and blacks out as soon as he is lit up, sometimes numerous times a shift. This happens to the county deputies as well.

 

I have seen both sides of pursuits, I have been the one chasing but I have also felt the tragic side of it as my ex-fiance was killed the week before Thanksgiving by a POS 16yoa in a stolen car who ran a red light and t-boned her and her friend killing them instantly, then he proceeded to bail on foot and leave the scene in a friend's car. 

 

It is frustrating in both stances but as I stated before, I am curious to see the other policies out there regarding pursuits. 

I'm in Texas. Our policy is, chase them until they're caught or dead. We don't put up with criminals here.

 

I used to volunteer with the Florida Highway Patrol before I moved here, and FHP's policy was only to pursue violent felons. That's a pretty common policy these days, since the politicians worry more about liability than catching the bad guys.

In russia it's governed by the Ministry order, which states that a road police officer may undertake the pursuit if something of the following is present:

1.Failure to stop when ordered

2.Observation of a crime committed and no possibility to order a vehicle to stop

3.An order to stop the vehicle. 

 

Police allowed to use special equipment and police cars to forcibly stop a pursuit. However, I never heard about a spike strip being used, and if a patrol unit takes damage, the officer gets fired or has to pay for the repair (unofficially of course). So they mostly use heavy-duty civilian vehicles to block a road. If a vehicle gets damaged, it's hard to get a compensation. 

 

Police actively use weapons in pursuit, (you can call it drive-by I guess) trying to get the tires. 

 

Patrol police (not the road police) can also pursuit, however I don't know if there's an act which lays out a procedure.

 

On top of that I may add that many police cars aren't that modern and can't keep up with new models. Pursuit more often does more harm than good since too many civilians are put in danger, and if you have a license plate it's no problem to track the suspect down by other means. I also may add from my own experience how we tried to apprehend a guy giving money to police, and when he saw us he drove off. Investigators have no rights to pursue a car and police accompanying us was unable to pursue him either so... That was all for the day.

my family is heavily into law enforcement here in ohio. they chase em til they catch em! i have not heard of a pursuit being stopped ever here lol.

Most of the time the pursuits over here just get called off because they're "too dangerous". There was actually a huge debate a year or so ago suggesting that the government should ban police pursuits altogether because of a few accidents resulting from police pursuits. That to me is completely ridiculous especially considering the tactics we use are no-where near as risky as those employed by other countries. Most of the time our cops will just follow and wait for the suspect to crash before doing anything. 

In Florida the pursuit policy is essentially the same as yours it has to be a "felony" to chase them. Now you would still need approval from the Patrol Sgt or your supervisor and i think theres alot of factors involved in the decision because of risks and liability. 

 

I actually ran from the police ( when i was young and dumb) and the officer activated his lights and sirens but i turned my lights off and dipped and the officer turned off all of his emergency equipment off and stopped following me. Now at the time i didnt think i had done anything wrong and was like f##$ the police. But afterwords the officer told me i looked suspicious because i was parked in a parking lot after the business was closed so he initiated a traffic stop. He also stated he didnt like chasing people in residential areas because it was too dangerous. 

 

So i understand both sides of this and i dont think that we should abolish all pursuits because that will set a dangerous precedent. However we cant allow the police to chase every single person that attempts to flee and elude them for minor traffic offences because its just not worth the risk to the offender, the officer, and the public. 

- If the person has first or second degree.

- Person is an immediate threat.

- Likelihood of successful apprehension.

Obviously there's other things that fall in to play like the weather & how densely populated etc.

I don't exactly know what the Pursuit Policy is here. But I think they it's different from Dept.-to-Dept.

 

But The State Patrol uses aircraft in operations including speed traps. So they dispatch a plane and from above they can see the suspect fleeing and can track from the air then the officers can pursue from a distance instead of roaring down the road. Then they'll either wait till' they bail or they setup Stop Sticks.

My mistake, I failed to mention I'm in Florida as well...