Police Pursuits

Evaluation of Pursuit

The evaluation of pursuit driving has only a brief history. Precious little research was conducted until the 1980s, when pursuit was first seriously questioned by victims, concerned citizens, and progressive police administrators. Soon thereafter police pursuit was identified as “the most deadly weapon” (Alpert and Anderson 1986). More recently, individual agencies have conducted their own data collection and evaluation efforts. The specific numbers and conclusions from many of these studies have been reviewed elsewhere [Page 1182](see Alpert et al. 2000). It must be emphasized, however, that the originating activity in most pursuits is a traffic offense. It is also important to understand that pursuits in urban areas pose far greater risks than those conducted in rural areas or on freeways; aggregate statistics mask the very real danger of urban pursuits and those conducted on streets where they are likely to encounter traffic.

All the research conducted on pursuit points to the same issue: the balance between the enforcement of laws and the safety of the public. In other words, it is an accepted fact that driving erratically on public streets at excessive rates of speed is dangerous to those involved—officer and suspect—as well as to those who may be in the path—passengers and innocent bystanders. The question is whether it is worth enforcing the law the suspect has broken, given the risk created by that process. Stated in a different way, pursuit driving must be evaluated by balancing the need to immediately apprehend the suspect with the likelihood of accident or injury. It is clear that both law enforcement and public safety are significant. Unfortunately, to achieve one, the other may have to be sacrificed. On the one hand, if a particular law were enforced to the exclusion of public safety, then any cost of pursuit driving would be justified. On the other hand, if laws were enforced only when there was no risk to the public, no pursuit would be justified. Obviously, neither extreme is acceptable. Proper police conduct must balance these two goals. For example, although no one has seriously advocated taking firearms away from the police, the trend has been to restrict their use to extreme situations. Similarly, it would not be in society's best interest to take the ability to pursue criminals from the police, but as in the use of firearms, there is a trend to restrict its use (Alpert and Fridell 1992). There exists a need to balance these two critical social demands: the need to immediately apprehend a suspect and the risk to the public created by a pursuit.

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