Re: Need For Speed Police
Niki Wienberg
High-speed police chases are a deadly tactic used and abused by the police to apprehend motorists who flee from traffic stops. Police departments around the country routinely escalate stops for mere traffic infractions into dangerous high-speed pursuits, resulting in death and injury to those involved. Moreover, Black Americans represent a disproportionate number of those stopped, chased, and killed by police, making high-speed chases, like many police-citizen encounters, highly racialized. However, for motorists injured by high-speed chases, maintaining a successful lawsuit against the responsible officers remains incredibly difficult under current excessive force jurisprudence. Although police department policies limiting when and why officers may initiate a pursuit might mitigate the abuse of this police tactic, heightened judicial scrutiny of high-speed chases is what is needed to provide survivors of police brutality with meaningful redress for the harm they have suffered. This note calls for a shift in excessive force jurisprudence that would allow plaintiffs to argue what is plainly true: that it is inherently unreasonable for officers to engage in high-speed pursuits
Every time police officers activate their lights and sirens, punch their accelerators and pursue fleeing motorists in Virginia, I hope they remember people like Andre Bassette Jr. Or teenage cyclists like Geormond Morton. Or Gary Roberson, whom I once interviewed.
In previous years, many departments had limited high-speed pursuits. But Stateline notes legislators and some police agencies, citing concerns about crime, have since eased restrictions. (Stateline is a sister publication of the Virginia Mercury.)
Florida, Washington state, the District of Columbia and San Francisco are among the places that have rolled back restrictions over the past year. That decision is alarming, especially given the possibility for deaths and injuries to unsuspecting civilians and the officers themselves.
Several law enforcement agencies I canvassed around Virginia still have strict guidelines and parameters regarding police chases. They weigh the seriousness of the crimes a suspect is accused of versus the possible threat to others on the roadways. The Richmond Times-Dispatch found similar results last year when reporting on a handful of agencies.
The Fairfax County Police Department, the largest among localities in the state with nearly 1,500 sworn officers, has a pursuit policy mandating officers have a reasonable suspicion that fleeing motorists or their passengers have committed or tried to commit a violent felony, or possibly violated any felony or misdemeanor involving the display, threat or firing of a gun or explosive device.
The January news release by H&P Law said it analyzed the percentage of fatal crashes involving a police pursuit in each state. The firm, known for personal injury litigation, studied crashes from 2017 to 2021 reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Relatively few people were injured or killed in those 2,222 police chases. Most of those harmed were criminal suspects or law enforcement officials. Last year, though, 28 third-party individuals were injured during 716 State Police chases. In 2021, one uninvolved person and nine suspects died during 492 pursuits.
More than a quarter century ago, while reporting at the (Newport News) Daily Press, I met Gary Roberson. While walking to a convenience store in 1997 in Newport News, he was struck by a car fleeing police when it ran up onto the sidewalk.
The suspect who struck Roberson, police said at the time, had earlier arrests or convictions for speeding, cocaine possession, brandishing a firearm and assault. A lawsuit filed by Roberson claimed police officers should have prevented the suspect from even entering his car the day of the chase.
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Longtime columnist and editorial writer Roger Chesley worked at the (Newport News) Daily Press and The (Norfolk) Virginian-Pilot from 1997 through 2018. He previously worked at newspapers in Cherry Hill, N.J., and Detroit. Reach him at [email protected]
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Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit is a 1998 racing video game developed for PlayStation by EA Canada and Microsoft Windows by EA Seattle, and published by Electronic Arts. It is the third major installment in the Need for Speed franchise, incorporating police pursuits as a major part of gameplay. Hot Pursuit remains focused on racing using exotic sports cars, but features races that primarily take place in locations within North America, including varied settings and climates. Police AI is improved over the first game, utilizing several tactics to stop both the player and opponent. The PlayStation version was released on March 25, 1998, while the Windows version was released on October 12 the same year. The game received critical success, with praise for its graphics and customization options. It received a direct sequel in 2002 and a reboot in 2010.
With police pursuits reintegrated into the game, Hot Pursuit's gameplay now consists of two categories. The first encompasses standard racing, as it has been in its predecessors, The Need for Speed and Need for Speed II, in which the player is allowed to race against one (including split-screen races) or seven other racers in normal circuit racers, knockouts, or tournaments (which allow the player to unlock bonus vehicles and a bonus track). The second category is dubbed "Hot Pursuit", where police pursuits are included in races; the mode allows the player to select a standard sports car to race against a single opponent in a police-scattered track. The PC version also contains a role reversal variation in which players select a police version of a sports car to pursue and stop all six racers before they complete the race. Completing the Hot Pursuit challenges in both roles in the PC version on every track of the game unlocks additional police sports cars.
Two modes were introduced in the game. The two-player split-screen mode allows two players to race using the same computer. The "Knockout" mode consists of seven races with eight racers on randomly chosen tracks, in which conditions such as selected difficulty, weather, and so on that the player has chosen before starting the race-series will apply. Each race consists of two laps where the driver who finishes last will be eliminated from the race lineup. All other drivers advance to the next round and carry on with the battle until there is only one player left, who technically wins the knockout competition. The standard "Tournament" mode consists of eight opponents in a four-lap race on randomly selected tracks and choices made by the player as in the knockout mode take effect when the tournament is started. The game supports network play through a serial port, modem, or IPX, and online gaming through TCP/IP protocol. It also allowed spawn installations of itself to be installed on other machines.
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