** 5/12/26 - Governing - When Are Police Chases Worth It? + info re related reports from JAMA, about New York City Police, and from Police Executive Research Forum
1 view
Skip to first unread message
Buzz Sawyer
May 19, 2026, 11:08:34 PM (11 days ago) May 19
to 4 - Buzz Gmail Group
(1) the AMA item mentioned in the article is at link below:
Police Pursuit Fatalities in the US, 2009 to 2023
Andrew Hendrix, MD; Tamriage Martin, MD; Joshua Gazzetta, DO et al
Andrew Hendrix, MD; Tamriage Martin, MD; Joshua Gazzetta, DO et al
Published Online: April 1, 2026
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2847219
https://www.crimrxiv.com/pub/xm2wyat5/release/2?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Fast and Spurious: A Causal Evaluation of NYPD’s Pursuit Policy, 2022–2025
(3) The 150 page Police Executive Research Forum report is at link below:
which includes:
Findings In this cross-sectional study of 5425 fatal pursuit crashes over 15 years, deaths increased 2% annually after adjusting for population and crash frequency. More fatal pursuit crashes occurred at night, in urban areas, on noninterstate roads, and in southern states.
Meaning The findings support risk-based restrictions, mandatory national reporting, and investment in nonpursuit technologies among US police.
(2) The study re New York City Police chases is at link belowhttps://www.crimrxiv.com/pub/xm2wyat5/release/2?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Fast and Spurious: A Causal Evaluation of NYPD’s Pursuit Policy, 2022–2025
Published onMar 24, 2026
This study examines the consequences of the New York Police Department’s late-2022
This study examines the consequences of the New York Police Department’s late-2022
operational shift that dramatically expanded vehicle pursuits without a formal policy change.
Vehicular Pursuits
A Guide for Law Enforcement Executives
on Managing the Associated Risks
Published 2023
which includes
Early this month, when the driver of a stolen car took off during an attempted traffic stop, San Diego police officers raced after her, kicking off what would become an hourlong pursuit through the city. Police chased the suspected car thief from highway to highway, but fell back when she turned onto city streets. Shortly after, officers found her again and laid spike strips to try to deflate her tires. It didn’t go smoothly; the suspect dodged around the strips and toward nearby officers who fired at the vehicle. The driver, reportedly uninjured, continued her flight before officers eventually managed to arrest her.
Every step of the way, officers had to make decisions around whether to commence or continue the chase, and what alternative options they could, or should, try. Police departments across the country have been wrestling with similar debates for years, sometimes revising their policies after a chase goes wrong or crime concerns rise.
Many policing experts say chases are often more risk than benefit.
“Every year, you have literally hundreds of people that die as a result of pursuits,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a police research and policy organization which tends to advocate for police reform measures. A few years ago, the Department of Justice and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked PERF to create guidance for law enforcement to consider when designing vehicle pursuit policies. After consulting with a working group of “nationally renowned experts on law enforcement vehicle pursuit,” PERF released a report in 2022.
A suspect speeding or weaving to shake the police could lose control of their car. Ending the pursuit can end their reckless driving: the PERF report finds that 75 percent of offenders say they would slow their cars down once officers fell back. Police officers, too, can crash or hit people in a chase. Officers, suspects, pedestrians, bicyclists and other bystanders are all at risk.
But not pursuing also means more time when the suspect is at large and able to reoffend. If the person is violent and an active threat to the public, police are obligated to chase, experts say. Detaining a domestic terrorist who has planted a bomb and is likely headed to do more harm, for example, is worth the attendant risks of engaging in a high-speed chase, Wexler says.
A Journal of the American Medical Association study found that about 20 percent of police pursuits result in injuries and about 40 percent end in crashes. From 2009 to 2023, police chases averaged one crash per day across the country, with an average of one person killed. Four percent of the deaths were of people not in cars.
The actual harms may be higher, because the study only looked at deaths in crashes that ended the pursuits, not injuries or deaths that occurred during the pursuit. Chasing someone for a traffic violation or a kind of offense that rarely results in jail time often isn’t worth the risk that someone dies, Wexler says.
Public safety, and faith in police, are all at stake if a car chase goes wrong, says Thaddeus Johnson, senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and a former law enforcement officer in Tennessee. While police want to catch a suspect, they also have an obligation to keep that person safe: “We have a right to protect those drivers. As a police officer, we’re not judge, jury and executioner.”
But deciding not to pursue can require a shift in thinking. Historically, police have taken a suspect’s fleeing as an admission of guilt, and officers can feel pressure to detain the person immediately, Johnson says.
Some communities, however, want to see police chase smaller-level offenders to send a message that they take crime seriously.
“There are certain communities in this country that will determine that ‘People need to know that if they steal a car, they’ll be pursued,’” Wexler says.
Milwaukee has, at times, supported both sides of the debate. The city adopted a restrictive chase policy in 2010, only allowing pursuit in cases of violent felonies, but changed course in 2015 after a surge of car thefts. After that, the city began allowing pursuit in cases where the vehicle, not just the person, might have been involved in a violent felony. In 2017, rising cases of speeding, traffic violations and reckless driving prompted the city to loosen the policy further, allowing chases for reckless driving and drug dealing.
As a result, police chases rose 155 percent, from 369 in 2017 to 940 in 2018. The percentage of pursuits resulting in injuries rose slightly, and the sheer number of pursuits causing injuries rose significantly. In 2018 there were 112 chases that resulted in suspects getting injured (and five ended up in fatalities), up from 35 such pursuits in 2017. There were also 13 pursuits that led to officer injuries (one fatality) and 38 pursuits that injured bystanders. That’s up from 4 officer-injuring pursuits and 11 bystander-injuring pursuits in 2017. The majority of chases — 67 percent — were over reckless driving, and more than half of chases hit speeds over 75 mph.
The debate recently reopened in Milwaukee, as the Fire and Police Commission urges limiting police chases once again, and the police chief pushes back.
Research from New York City suggests that an increase in police chases does not correspond with a decline in crimes. The city saw the number of monthly police pursuits rise dramatically in late 2022, after a new police chief and mayoral administration encouraged expanding use of pursuits. In early 2025, the department reversed course and restricted chases to alleged felonies and violent misdemeanors. That decline in pursuits was not accompanied by an uptick in robberies, shootings or gunfire complaints, and the earlier spike in pursuits did not clearly reduce these crimes either, per a recent study.
Some pursuit policies are more restrictive and prescriptive, while others give police officers more discretion. Police departments might specify which exact crimes a driver must be accused of to justify chasing them, or might simply give a category of offenses for which a pursuit is allowed, such as “violent felony.’” Some departments also specify the kinds of offenses for which a chase is prohibited.
Policies can include safeguards, like requiring supervisor approval and/or requiring officers to consider various factors before engaging. The latter might include weighing how likely it is that officers could nab the suspect later and how much danger the fleeing car poses to the public.
Local issues often spur new approaches: after a 19-year-old bystander was killed during a police chase in 2025, Atlanta leaders wanted more restrictions. They urged state police to limit pursuits in high-density parts of the city, require supervisor approval and only chase suspects accused of violent felonies. Meanwhile, that same year neighboring DeKalb County leadership announced plans to crack down on street racing by giving officers more freedom to conduct pursuits and permission to use a controversial maneuver for stopping a suspect’s car. The PIT maneuver is sometimes discouraged due to its risk of causing deadly vehicle rollovers.
In 2024, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Florida and Washington state eased their restrictions on pursuits. Florida, for example, stopped limiting chases to felonies, reckless driving or driving under the influence and allowed police officers to use methods like driving in the wrong direction or on the wrong side of the road. One Florida county opted to allow more pursuits in 2025 out of concern that too many suspects were fleeing police rather than complying with traffic stops.
Michigan, meanwhile, added restrictions in 2024.
Johnson says that pursuits should be considered a “use of deadly force,” and weighed with that level of seriousness.
Context matters, too: it’s harder for the suspect and police officer to retain control of their vehicles and avoid hurting bystanders in crowded urban areas, at night, in wet or icy conditions, or if the suspect is intoxicated, for example. Police should be particularly cautious about pursuing teenage drivers, because young people’s lack of experience makes them more likely to lose control of their cars when trying to speed away, per PERF.
Officers need to not just assess these factors before entering into a pursuit but also throughout the whole chase, being willing to abandon it whenever the danger becomes too great to be worth it, experts say.
“We're not saying you should never pursue someone,” Wexler says. “We're saying when [officers] do, they should be well-trained, they should still adhere to traffic policies [and] those situations should be narrow.”
Abandoning a car pursuit doesn’t mean just letting the suspect go.
Tools can help: drones, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that can be deployed to follow the suspect from the skies instead of through busy streets. Other devices aim to immobilize the suspect’s car, like grapplers to grab and halt a car and spike strips to deflate the tires. However, these should be used with care; suspects might crash while trying to swerve around spike strips and grappler mistakes could send the suspect’s car spinning out of control. Surveillance tech like camera networks, automatic license plate readers and GPS trackers that can be fired to stick on a suspect’s car can all help officers find the suspect later, without driving in high-speed pursuit.
Limited budgets, constituent pushback or lack of reliable broadband mean that not every department will have these technologies. That’s when classic police work comes in. Officers refraining from pursuit can still trail the suspect’s car from a safe distance, and copy down details like the car’s license plate and vehicle make and the driver’s physical description to help find the person later. Police can broadcast the information to other units in the area, so they can help track the person, and officers can talk with witnesses to help find the suspect.
“At the end of the day, these technologies don't overcome good police work,” Johnson says.
Overview
Police vehicular pursuits present physical, emotional, and economic risks to the officer,1
bystanders, any passengers, and the fleeing suspect. Given these risks, law enforcement agencies need a
resource that identifies solutions for managing high-risk vehicular pursuits.
In 2020, Congress directed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in
partnership with police jurisdictions, to conduct a study that would lead to the development of
accurate reporting and analyses of crashes that involve police pursuits.2
While NHTSA currently
collects data on first responder vehicles that are involved in fatalities during police pursuits, those
data are subject to significant underreporting. NHTSA and the Office of Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS Office) tasked the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) with developing a guide, using the findings from that research, to provide pursuit safety information, research
data, and model policies to foster the promotion of safer vehicular pursuits. PERF, NHTSA, and
the COPS Office developed this resource in consultation with the Pursuits Working Group3 to
help police agencies manage the risks of vehicular pursuits. This document explains the context
for decision-making on pursuit policy, including the choices and risks associated with pursuits,
and gives guidance to executives on making the best choices for their agency and community.
This guide is applicable to law enforcement agencies of all types. The fundamental consideration
that any agency—state or local, urban or rural, etc.—must consider when establishing its vehicle
pursuits policy is the same: balancing risk and reward.
When Are Police Chases Worth It?
Police departments across the country are setting different thresholds for when theirofficers can and should pursue a fleeing driver. Experts say car chases should be treated with caution.
May 12, 2026 • Jule Pattison-Gordon
May 12, 2026 • Jule Pattison-Gordon
In Brief:
- High-speed car chases risk killing or injuring suspects, officers and bystanders. Not chasing, meanwhile, leaves the suspect at large for that much longer, risking a reoffense.
- Some state and local governments adopt restrictive policies, limiting chases to situations where the suspect has committed a violent felony. Others allow pursuits for lower-level offenses like running red lights.
- Officers who discontinue car chases out of concern for public safety can still use tracking and surveillance technologies and traditional police investigative work to search for the suspects.
Early this month, when the driver of a stolen car took off during an attempted traffic stop, San Diego police officers raced after her, kicking off what would become an hourlong pursuit through the city. Police chased the suspected car thief from highway to highway, but fell back when she turned onto city streets. Shortly after, officers found her again and laid spike strips to try to deflate her tires. It didn’t go smoothly; the suspect dodged around the strips and toward nearby officers who fired at the vehicle. The driver, reportedly uninjured, continued her flight before officers eventually managed to arrest her.
Every step of the way, officers had to make decisions around whether to commence or continue the chase, and what alternative options they could, or should, try. Police departments across the country have been wrestling with similar debates for years, sometimes revising their policies after a chase goes wrong or crime concerns rise.
Many policing experts say chases are often more risk than benefit.
“Every year, you have literally hundreds of people that die as a result of pursuits,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a police research and policy organization which tends to advocate for police reform measures. A few years ago, the Department of Justice and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked PERF to create guidance for law enforcement to consider when designing vehicle pursuit policies. After consulting with a working group of “nationally renowned experts on law enforcement vehicle pursuit,” PERF released a report in 2022.
A suspect speeding or weaving to shake the police could lose control of their car. Ending the pursuit can end their reckless driving: the PERF report finds that 75 percent of offenders say they would slow their cars down once officers fell back. Police officers, too, can crash or hit people in a chase. Officers, suspects, pedestrians, bicyclists and other bystanders are all at risk.
But not pursuing also means more time when the suspect is at large and able to reoffend. If the person is violent and an active threat to the public, police are obligated to chase, experts say. Detaining a domestic terrorist who has planted a bomb and is likely headed to do more harm, for example, is worth the attendant risks of engaging in a high-speed chase, Wexler says.
To Chase Or Not to Chase
A Journal of the American Medical Association study found that about 20 percent of police pursuits result in injuries and about 40 percent end in crashes. From 2009 to 2023, police chases averaged one crash per day across the country, with an average of one person killed. Four percent of the deaths were of people not in cars.
The actual harms may be higher, because the study only looked at deaths in crashes that ended the pursuits, not injuries or deaths that occurred during the pursuit. Chasing someone for a traffic violation or a kind of offense that rarely results in jail time often isn’t worth the risk that someone dies, Wexler says.
Public safety, and faith in police, are all at stake if a car chase goes wrong, says Thaddeus Johnson, senior fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice and a former law enforcement officer in Tennessee. While police want to catch a suspect, they also have an obligation to keep that person safe: “We have a right to protect those drivers. As a police officer, we’re not judge, jury and executioner.”
But deciding not to pursue can require a shift in thinking. Historically, police have taken a suspect’s fleeing as an admission of guilt, and officers can feel pressure to detain the person immediately, Johnson says.
Some communities, however, want to see police chase smaller-level offenders to send a message that they take crime seriously.
“There are certain communities in this country that will determine that ‘People need to know that if they steal a car, they’ll be pursued,’” Wexler says.
Milwaukee has, at times, supported both sides of the debate. The city adopted a restrictive chase policy in 2010, only allowing pursuit in cases of violent felonies, but changed course in 2015 after a surge of car thefts. After that, the city began allowing pursuit in cases where the vehicle, not just the person, might have been involved in a violent felony. In 2017, rising cases of speeding, traffic violations and reckless driving prompted the city to loosen the policy further, allowing chases for reckless driving and drug dealing.
As a result, police chases rose 155 percent, from 369 in 2017 to 940 in 2018. The percentage of pursuits resulting in injuries rose slightly, and the sheer number of pursuits causing injuries rose significantly. In 2018 there were 112 chases that resulted in suspects getting injured (and five ended up in fatalities), up from 35 such pursuits in 2017. There were also 13 pursuits that led to officer injuries (one fatality) and 38 pursuits that injured bystanders. That’s up from 4 officer-injuring pursuits and 11 bystander-injuring pursuits in 2017. The majority of chases — 67 percent — were over reckless driving, and more than half of chases hit speeds over 75 mph.
The debate recently reopened in Milwaukee, as the Fire and Police Commission urges limiting police chases once again, and the police chief pushes back.
Research from New York City suggests that an increase in police chases does not correspond with a decline in crimes. The city saw the number of monthly police pursuits rise dramatically in late 2022, after a new police chief and mayoral administration encouraged expanding use of pursuits. In early 2025, the department reversed course and restricted chases to alleged felonies and violent misdemeanors. That decline in pursuits was not accompanied by an uptick in robberies, shootings or gunfire complaints, and the earlier spike in pursuits did not clearly reduce these crimes either, per a recent study.
Where Agencies Stand
Some pursuit policies are more restrictive and prescriptive, while others give police officers more discretion. Police departments might specify which exact crimes a driver must be accused of to justify chasing them, or might simply give a category of offenses for which a pursuit is allowed, such as “violent felony.’” Some departments also specify the kinds of offenses for which a chase is prohibited.
Policies can include safeguards, like requiring supervisor approval and/or requiring officers to consider various factors before engaging. The latter might include weighing how likely it is that officers could nab the suspect later and how much danger the fleeing car poses to the public.
Local issues often spur new approaches: after a 19-year-old bystander was killed during a police chase in 2025, Atlanta leaders wanted more restrictions. They urged state police to limit pursuits in high-density parts of the city, require supervisor approval and only chase suspects accused of violent felonies. Meanwhile, that same year neighboring DeKalb County leadership announced plans to crack down on street racing by giving officers more freedom to conduct pursuits and permission to use a controversial maneuver for stopping a suspect’s car. The PIT maneuver is sometimes discouraged due to its risk of causing deadly vehicle rollovers.
In 2024, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Florida and Washington state eased their restrictions on pursuits. Florida, for example, stopped limiting chases to felonies, reckless driving or driving under the influence and allowed police officers to use methods like driving in the wrong direction or on the wrong side of the road. One Florida county opted to allow more pursuits in 2025 out of concern that too many suspects were fleeing police rather than complying with traffic stops.
Michigan, meanwhile, added restrictions in 2024.
Weighing a Pursuit
Johnson says that pursuits should be considered a “use of deadly force,” and weighed with that level of seriousness.
Context matters, too: it’s harder for the suspect and police officer to retain control of their vehicles and avoid hurting bystanders in crowded urban areas, at night, in wet or icy conditions, or if the suspect is intoxicated, for example. Police should be particularly cautious about pursuing teenage drivers, because young people’s lack of experience makes them more likely to lose control of their cars when trying to speed away, per PERF.
Officers need to not just assess these factors before entering into a pursuit but also throughout the whole chase, being willing to abandon it whenever the danger becomes too great to be worth it, experts say.
“We're not saying you should never pursue someone,” Wexler says. “We're saying when [officers] do, they should be well-trained, they should still adhere to traffic policies [and] those situations should be narrow.”
Other Options
Abandoning a car pursuit doesn’t mean just letting the suspect go.
Tools can help: drones, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that can be deployed to follow the suspect from the skies instead of through busy streets. Other devices aim to immobilize the suspect’s car, like grapplers to grab and halt a car and spike strips to deflate the tires. However, these should be used with care; suspects might crash while trying to swerve around spike strips and grappler mistakes could send the suspect’s car spinning out of control. Surveillance tech like camera networks, automatic license plate readers and GPS trackers that can be fired to stick on a suspect’s car can all help officers find the suspect later, without driving in high-speed pursuit.
Limited budgets, constituent pushback or lack of reliable broadband mean that not every department will have these technologies. That’s when classic police work comes in. Officers refraining from pursuit can still trail the suspect’s car from a safe distance, and copy down details like the car’s license plate and vehicle make and the driver’s physical description to help find the person later. Police can broadcast the information to other units in the area, so they can help track the person, and officers can talk with witnesses to help find the suspect.
“At the end of the day, these technologies don't overcome good police work,” Johnson says.
Tags:
Public SafetyJule Pattison-Gordon is a senior staff writer for Governing. Jule previously wrote for Government Technology, PYMNTS and The Bay State Banner and holds a B.A. in creative writing from Carnegie Mellon.
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages