Law enforcement agencies usually let squad cars handle high-speed pursuits

OFF THE WIRE, BUT NOT WORTH A LIFE
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_D_cycles13.20f59c4.html Law enforcement agencies usually let squad cars handle high-speed pursuits
11:27 PM PDT on Saturday, June 12, 2010
By MARK MUCKENFUSS AND STEVEN BARRIE The Press-Enterprise
Whether or not it was a good idea for a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer to initiate a high-speed chase, the agency's policy, common in law enforcement circles, calls for squad cars to take over a pursuit as soon as they can reach the scene.
Officer Thomas Philip Coleman didn't get that chance Friday. Within two minutes of beginning the pursuit, his motorcycle crashed into a big-rig truck on a surface street in Redlands. He died at the scene.
Four men in the stolen car Coleman was chasing have been arrested. The driver was booked on suspicion of murder Saturday. The other occupants of the car were arrested on lesser charges.
California Highway Patrol officers receive quarterly training in the agency's pursuit policies, said Officer Daniel Hesser, a spokesman for the CHP's Inland Division.
The policies are extensive, but they state clearly that "if a patrol car is able to get there, it takes over the pursuit" from a motorcycle officer, Hesser said.
About the only time a CHP officer will continue to pursue someone in hazardous circumstances "is if he is a known felon wanted for a heinous crime," he said.
On-duty motorcycle accidents that result in the death of a law enforcement officer are rare. Among all law enforcement agencies statewide, there were five motorcycle deaths from 2005 to 2009.
Statewide statistics show that from 1999 to 2008, seven CHP officers were killed in motorcycle accidents while on duty. Over the same period, 59 officers lost their lives in patrol car accidents.
The trend, or lack of one, is in contrast to the rise in motorcycle fatalities in general.
Thomas Rice is a researcher at the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center at UC Berkeley. He said more than twice as many people are killed on motorcycles today than a decade ago, largely due to more bikes on the road. Law enforcement use of motorcycles has remained relatively unchanged. Some agencies are even rethinking the value of using motorcycles.
Simon Washington, the director of the Berkeley center, said the real issue may not be the motorcycles themselves, but how they are used.
"A lot of law enforcement agencies are looking into policies of whether high-speed chases are prudent," Washington said.
Officials from Inland law enforcement agencies said they have detailed policies laying out the guidelines for such pursuits.
SHERIFF POLICY SIMILAR
Riverside County Chief Deputy Jerry Williams said that, much like the CHP, motorcycle officers with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department are allowed to initiate pursuits, but they let a marked patrol car take the lead as soon as possible.
A supervisor must also make decisions about whether the circumstances make a pursuit too dangerous for the officer or the public to justify continuing it.
For instance, if someone who is suspected only of a traffic violation is driving on the wrong side of the road to evade an officer, the pursuit likely would be called off.
Such decisions have to be made "very quickly under unpredictable and difficult circumstances," Williams said.
In a case where an officer crashes in a pursuit under way for less than a minute, such policies might be irrelevant, Williams said.
Lt. Dennis Vrooman, of the Murrieta Police Department, said an officer probably would not have time to relay the circumstances to the supervisor charged with making a call about whether a pursuit is worth continuing.
"You're relaying the speeds, the direction of travel, all of these dynamics," he said. "You have to kind of go through a checklist in your mind."
As with the Sheriff's Department, Murrieta motorcycle officers can initiate a pursuit, but a patrol car should take over as soon as possible, Vrooman said.
"Vehicular pursuits require officers to exhibit a high degree of common sense and sound judgment," Murrieta's pursuit policy states. "Officers must not forget that the immediate apprehension of a suspect is generally not more important than the safety of the public and pursuing officers."
Take the case of a drunken driver, he said. A crash could happen if the officer pursues the driver -- or if the officer lets the drunken driver go.
"You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't," he said.