The problem’s in police chases has been evident for decades…
California helicopter chases on TV WAS what people saw and stayed locked on for entertainment …
But?
There was also high speed police chases were the suspect ran into things and sometimes people….
There was a arrest …
But the insurance companies and sometimes the cops themselves ended up getting sued….
Yes…
Sued….
From the second the cops began the chase?
They and the taxpayers paying the insurance policies and part of settlements came on the hook….
Across the nation insurance companies have raised the rates for counties, towns, cities and state governments on their police departments due to policies about chases….
No one is saying someone wanted for serious crimes should be let go…
And departments who KNOW who they are chasing now often just check GPS tags to find their suspects….
Actions to capture people on simple traffic situation’s are being discouraged by police departments under pressure from their elected bosses who have to balance budgets…And deal with chases gone bad in the media…
Where community activists, use-of-force victims and city officials have failed to persuade police departments to change dangerous and sometimes deadly policing practices, insurers are successfully dictating changes to tactics and policies, mostly at small to medium-size departments throughout the nation.
The movement is driven by the increasingly large jury awards and settlements that cities and their insurers are paying in police use-of-force cases, especially since the 2020 deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Those cases led to settlements of $12 million and $27 million, respectively. Insurance companies are passing the costs — and potential future costs — on to their law enforcement clients.
Larger law enforcement agencies — like the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department or the New York Police Department — handle it in different ways, often by creating a special fund to finance settlements or by paying those costs from the county’s or city’s general fund. This insulates them from external demands by insurers.
Departments with a long history of large civil rights settlements have seen their insurance rates shoot up by 200 to 400 percent over the past three years, according to insurance industry and police experts.
Even departments with few problems are experiencing rate increases of 30 to 100 percent. Now, insurers also are telling departments that they must change the way they police….
…
There is no public data tracking how many police departments have made policy changes at the behest of their insurers. But the changes are widespread, affecting thousands of departments, according to interviews with more than two dozen insurance analysts, police reform experts and a review of hundreds of pages of insurance documents….
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In St. Ann [St. Louis] , the vehicle tracking system — called “StarChase” — allows officers to tag and track fleeing suspects without engaging in high-speed chases.
Officers fall back and, using the GPS coordinates, later catch up with suspects when they park. So far, St. Ann police officials say 58 arrests have been made using the technology, including one in June following a “road rage” incident. Officers let the suspect flee and later tracked her to a ditch where she had crashed her SUV, records show. The technology is not perfect — officers have to be close enough to hit the target, and weather and the surface of the fleeing vehicle can inhibit the dart’s ability to attach. But Freet and other officers say that overall, they like the technology.
“You should see the look on their face when we pull up,” Freet said of those who flee the police and are tracked down. “They think they’ve outrun us.”…