Most big cities have adopted disengage rules so that innocent people aren’t killed, including cops.
When someone is blasting through active intersections at a high rate of speed it is Russian Roulette, the fleeing vehicle is the gun but the police are the ones holding the gun and pulling the trigger with every reckless act that endangers innocent people’s lives.
Yes, it’s a criminal act for the person fleeing to blast an intersection, it is criminal reckless endangerment, if they hit a car and kill someone it is willful manslaughter, not accidental manslaughter. When the pursuing cop sees the person he is pursuing doing life threatening reckless acts, he is doing the exact same thing when he closes his eyes and blasts the same intersection. He is every bit as guilty of criminal reckless endangerment as that person fleeing. If he kills an innocent person he is guilty of willful manslaughter because there was every opportunity to disengage and not do the same reckless thing the criminal did.
This is why most large cities have instituted disengagement rules. It is to save lives that will be lost when overzealous and out of control cops refuse to allow someone fleeing to get away. This can cost cities tens of millions of dollars because it is so easy to lay unnecessary deaths at the doorstep of cops that let an ego and emotion driven refusal to let someone get away with whatever infraction started the whole thing. Someone gets pulled over for a minor and likely non threatening traffic violation and wants to get away bad enough that he is going to kill someone rather than get caught? Let them go rather than want to catch them so badly that you as a cop are also willing to kill someone. Make the case in a court case against the city that the person was guilty of a minor traffic violation and it isn’t hard to arrive at a place where a death or injury was simply inexcusably not worth it.
FOX opened the door to a shit storm, MSN should be all over this. It points out an aspect of letting cops be out of control. Cops who do not have the control to disengage under the heat of a pursuit that gets dangerous are cops who do not have the control to be a cop, Period.
MSN, point out what this guy did in the first place, what was the offense that was so egregious that the cops had to endanger innocent people to this degree.
And you want to know something else, and this is big? This was a big enough city that they had a helicopter in the chase, it was being filmed. My point being that when you have eyes on the fleeing vehicle there is absolutely no reason to pressure this guy into this degree of recklessness, the cops could have disengaged much sooner. The helicopter keeps an eye on the vehicle and they pick him up later.
Make FOX look stupid for even airing this, they will hate the police department getting beat up for being at fault for the accident.
It’s so easy to miss great opportunities to make excellent points.