PIT me, baby

May 2, 2008 9:38 AM

Enthusiastic police pursuits + litigious society = lawyer's fantasy?

A glut of American police chase video shows have been appearing on UK digital TV channels lately (stuff like 'Cops on Camera' or 'World's Wildest Police Chases', mostly presented by orange overlord Sheriff John Bunnell). Alongside them are the British variety of road policing clip-shows (like 'Police, Camera, Action', presented by equally orange serial drunk-driver Alastair Stewart). The American programs make the British stuff look laughably tame, and the American road policing methods make for great, exciting TV, if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. But how do these (apparently) gung-ho tactics gel with (what I'm led to believe is) the world's most litigious nation?

Firstly, the American police seem to love shooting out tyres. This never happens in the British versions of the show - obviously, because most of the police are unarmed; the few UK officers that are armed, IIRC, are suspended from duty pending investigation if they discharge their firearm for any reason. But US police seem happy to fire shotguns out of car windows in moderate traffic and blaze away with handguns in populated areas. Surely blowing out a tyre like this could cause a major crash? Surely bullets could ricochet and hit the cop, the suspect or innocent bystanders? These actions don't appear to be exceptional events (in one episode an officer happens upon a guy burgling a cell phone store. Guy takes fright and attempts to drive away, so the officer's first instinct is to fire repeatedly at his tyres before getting into his own car to give chase). Are US officers entitled to open fire like this whenever they feel the urge? If an officer returns to the station minus several rounds of ammo, is there an investigation where he has to justify or explain his actions, or is it just all in the line of duty? What happens if a civilian later turns up claiming that they or their property have been hit by a stray bullet or similar?

Secondly, the American police seem to be allowed to use the PIT manoeuvre at will to stop a car they are pursuing. I've seen episodes where this has caused the 'bandit' car to be totally wrecked, or to career into other motorists. This is totally verboten for the UK police - they have to use TPAC to box them in and bring them to a controlled stop, or else let them go and hope the helicopter can track them. Do the US officers have to be specially trained and authorised to do this, or can any old neighbourhood cop give it a go? What happens if the car they spin out kills someone?

I appreciate that these events aren't exactly commonplace, but I've seen enough examples to suggest that they're not all that rare. I also appreciate that law enforcement officers in the US potentially face grave danger on every call, what with all the meth, handguns and assault weapons in circulation. But is this thought of as extreme or heavy-handed, or is it standard, acceptable police behaviour? Is there serious concern about this in the US? And what is the situation with the inevitable 'collateral damage'? Do the police have the resources to just pay up, or are there endless court cases and lawsuits?

posted by boosh to law & government (31 comments total)

Links?
posted by Pollomacho at 9:56 AM on May 2, 2008

What I mean is, do you have specific examples of this? I have not seen a reality cop show where they actually fire a gun at a car, with one exception, that is a specially loaded shotgun used in a rural or remote area. Shooting tire, to my knowledge, would be an immediate suspension if not a termination in most police forces that I know of in the US, except in the example given. Only in fictional cop shows are cops shown shooting out of moving cars, not in real life.

I don't know what shows you are watching, but they aren't the reality programs. Your question seems to be more a poke at fictional America than reality as well.
posted by Pollomacho at 10:03 AM on May 2, 2008

ricochet - not so much if the bullets are lead.

I can't speak to the US, but in Canada officers are trained in how to "bump" or nudge the other vehicle to cause it to spin (out of control).

Yes, there is risk to others.
posted by jkaczor at 10:06 AM on May 2, 2008

Your question reminded me of this column I read on NY Times a while ago.

Searching the site, it looks like the same columnist has written a ton of stuff about the issue of police pursuits, aggressive tactics, etc.
posted by scribbler at 10:06 AM on May 2, 2008

The media is exceptional at reporting police brutality stories. In so much as it makes good news, so they report it. They also love stats for similar reasons, and shots fired stats are widely reported for major police districts. You must keep in mind that the United States is so much more diverse and so much larger than the UK, even if we had the same number of shots fired as a percentage wise, it would still dwarf the UK in absolute terms.

The "SWAT" shows they have in the US are exceedingly boring. It usually involves a bunch of well-armored paramilitary guys cornering off a house and trying to end the standoff peacefully. This means hours of sitting around waiting for the suspect to give up. They'll go through a litany of non-lethal tactics before guns are even fired.
posted by geoff. at 10:09 AM on May 2, 2008

An important part of the context for understanding policing in the US is that there is no national police force here (well, aside from the FBI, but they don't have anything to do with traffic control or other local policing matters). Police forces are local, often hyper-local, and each generates its own rules of engagement, deadly force policies, etc, within the local, state, and national legal context.

So the rules about high-speed pursuit, or use of deadly force, will vary from town to town, and city to city. They get changed sometimes in response to lawsuits, making the legal environment an important factor in determining the parameters of what the police can and cannot do.

Remember also that those TV shows are drawing on 20 or more years of dashboard camera footage, and selecting only the exceptional and exciting examples. Most pursuits are not high-speed and dangerous, and most traffic stops do not end in a hail of gunfire. So even though these events can generate lawsuits, there just aren't that many of them relative to the entire population.
posted by Forktine at 10:10 AM on May 2, 2008

Are US officers entitled to open fire like this whenever they feel the urge?

Yes! It's terrifying, seriously.
(no, I was just kidding. Did you believe me? Was this a serious question?)

If an officer returns to the station minus several rounds of ammo, is there an investigation where he has to justify or explain his actions, or is it just all in the line of duty?

Discharging a weapon is a Big Deal requiring a Serious Paperwork. It's completely normal for a police officer to go his or her entire career without ever firing a shot outside of a training exercise. I think that the shows you are watching are not documentaries.
posted by moxiedoll at 10:12 AM on May 2, 2008

Agreeing with Pollomacho:

- as far as openly firing at fleeing suspects vehicles, it sounds like you've been watching Jerry Bruckheimer films, not (themselves rather silly) reality cop shows if you're seeing police offers firing at and from moving vehicles.

- engaging in high speed chases is rare enough; PIT is generally reserved (from what little I know of the practice) for lower-speed interactions, as a resort in unusually risky engagements and generally with a great deal of coordination between several cars. It makes for great television (whether documentary or fiction or somewhere in between), but it's not something done willy-nilly or busted out on a whim by Joe City Squadcar.
posted by cortex at 10:14 AM on May 2, 2008

Here's the thing. Police in Britain are servants of the Crown. Thus, they hold the right of soverign immunity. So do the police here. The immunity is called "qualified immunity." It makes them immune from civil suit if they didn't violate a civil right which was well-established or if their belief that they were not violating the civil right of the person was "reasonable."

The issue is fought out as part of a motion to dismiss. If the officer loses, unlike most cases, he or she can appeal that decision immediately.

Stopping a fleeing car is always done under a "search and seizure" 4th Amendment analysis.

There are a lot of these cases out there, however, and in most major metropolitian areas, most chases are now forbidden, unless they are pretty sure it is a felon in the car. Joyriding kids are generally not chased in cities anymore, leading to a lot of auto theft. The dangers are considered too great.
posted by Ironmouth at 10:15 AM on May 2, 2008

I don't have a link to what boosh is talking about, but i live in the UK and i've watched exactly the same type of programme that he has.

It starts with, "hi, i'm State trooper John Bunnell" and ends with "he'll be (doing whatever he was doing)......ALL THE WAY TO JAIL!"

every. time.

and it seems like when trying to stop a fugitive in a vehicle, that its almost as if they wait till they're in a populated area, with school children crossing the road, and whats that in background? a "gas" station! yeah, lets pick now, after 2 hours in the countryside, to spin him out.

but from the comments above, it seems like you guys are getting grossly mis-represented over here. because i can only vouch for Boosh that that is the impression being given from the american cop shows shown here. You guys should speak to John Bunnell, or insist that he be stopped from broadcasting his home movies of the "worst police behaviour ever".
posted by galactain at 10:17 AM on May 2, 2008

To elaborate on the local nature of policing in the US, according to this Wikipedia entry there are an astounding "17,784 law enforcement agencies, spread out across the federal, state, and local levels of government." In terms of law enforcement, the US is a real anomaly compared to most of the world; the legal context is just one aspect of that anomalousness.
posted by Forktine at 10:17 AM on May 2, 2008

Okay, it has to be said for starters that your "source material" is absurd. The extreme of the extreme are culled for these shows with the specific goal of generating "exciting television." You're looking at a miniscule, non-representative sample of reality.

Police in the U.S. are not under a uniform jurisdiction and regulations on these things vary by city, county, state. In examinations of pursuit tactics I've seen the PIT maneuver is something that is trained. If someone died in the course of it, it would be like any other death resulting from a police action: it would be investigated, litigation might result. Municipalities and states in charge of particular police forces are routinely litigated against for police actions and not infrequently settle or are ordered to pay damages.

These situations are not routine enough that it is constantly in public debate, but it has become part of the public dialog in recent years (I think the rise of these extreme cop shows has probably played a part in it). You can look at the results of something like this - there are definitely a lot of people arguing that aggressive automotive pursuit tactics are a danger to public safety and unwarranted. I've seen several stories in the past few years about specific jurisdictions that eliminated them in one way or another on that basis.
posted by nanojath at 10:21 AM on May 2, 2008

Couple extra things to add: generally, the qualified immunity of police officers is also buttressed by statutes that make accidental deaths resulting from attempts to apprehend a criminal additional counts in that criminal's indictment. If you're speeding away from the cops, any property damage or injury to bystanders is on the person fleeing, not the cops, generally.

Second, those clips are from (generally) over 20 years (since they started putting cameras in cop cars), and there's a fair amount of repetition if you watch the show long enough. So, your sample's pretty well fucked regarding a picture of American law enforcement.
posted by klangklangston at 10:35 AM on May 2, 2008

Pollomacho - Shooting tire, to my knowledge, would be an immediate suspension if not a termination in most police forces that I know of in the US, except in the example given. Only in fictional cop shows are cops shown shooting out of moving cars, not in real life.

I don't know what shows you are watching, but they aren't the reality programs. Your question seems to be more a poke at fictional America than reality as well.

This isn't intended as a poke at America, fictional or otherwise. I'm genuinely interested at how commonplace this behaviour is, how much latitude officers have with firing their weapons, and the reaction of the general public towards such tactics as they seem (to me, as an outsider) amazing and terrifying in equal measures. I'm not suggesting that such shows are in any way indicative of day-to-day policing in the US - these are, of course, exceptional examples culled from years of duty of many thousands of officers in a nation of hundreds of millions. But still, I've watched some of these examples in amazement that the officers involved weren't prosecuted for recklessness, let alone celebrated on a clip show.

These are 'reality' shows, featuring footage from dash-mounted cams in police cruisers. I don't have any links but these are American programs (some of them have been re-dubbed with a British voice-over for the UK market, I think). The attempted shooting of tyres appears fairly frequently, and they use their service handguns.
posted by boosh at 10:38 AM on May 2, 2008

Scott v. Harris
posted by Pollomacho at 10:42 AM on May 2, 2008

Where I live, those sorts of pursuits are being eliminated - officers have already been informed to avoid high-speed pursuits in favor of having a spotter plane or helicopter follow the suspect from a distance because the suspect will usually slow down and drive safely.

There have been problems with implementing the new rule - not everyone wants to stop with the chases, and the media certainly don't want them to stop - but it is happening.

Don't believe everything you see on television.
posted by arnicae at 10:42 AM on May 2, 2008

The squeaky wheel gets the gunshot. If ordinary life made good television, only the extraordinarily dull would bother with television.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:55 AM on May 2, 2008

According to cop friends that I know, in New Jersey, the state police can't chase you if your doing over 100mph. That doesn't necessarily stop them, but yes, they now have rules to stop that sort of stuff. They WILL roadblock you at Garden State Parkway tolls though, as I found out from other friends who are amateur motorcycle racers :)
posted by Mach5 at 11:06 AM on May 2, 2008

I've seen a couple of episodes of those types of shows. The ones I've seen, however, made one thing perfectly clear: the police only forcefully bring the motorist to a stop if continuing the pursuit would endanger others. So, in the shows I've seen, there are long sections where the police are just continuing the follow the guy, and following, and following... And then, if they're starting to head into town, or if the motorist is trying to get onto the wrong direction of the freeway, or something equally unsafe, they do what they can to make him stop. At that point, the motorist's actions are making the world dangerous for innocent people, and so the police do what they can to stop him. That doesn't seem so crazy to me.
posted by Ms. Saint at 11:08 AM on May 2, 2008

Do you really think that you can rely on a show called "World's Wildest Police Chases," and come away with a real understanding of U.S. police procedure? I'm kind of speechless right now.

I can only speak for my portion of the country, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and for most of 16 years I've lived in either Berkeley or Oakland. I had a good friend killed by someone fleeing a police chase - my friend turned left at 1am from one major street to another and was hit by someone fleeing the cops at over 80mph with their lights off. He was not the only person killed by a police chase in Berkeley that week. After that, police chases came under a lot of scrutiny, and it became clear to me that horrific as those deaths were, they are actually pretty rare. Berkeley cops have a very strict policy about car chases - they don't do them - my friend was killed by a chase started in another city that culminated in Berkeley. Berkeley actually suffers quite a bit for this fact - since every driver fleeing police in adjoining cities runs to Berkeley.

I had an opportunity to speak with the supervisor of the police involved in the chase that killed my friend, and they were very upset. This sort of thing is very rare, and they were undergoing a lot of counseling because of it.

I really have to question why people actually believe all of the crap that they've heard about this country. You're right about one thing, we do have a very litigious society - can you really imagine that we allow the cops to operate as if this were Mad Max - hell, you can't even get a hot cup of coffee anymore without signing a waiver. If you can't give us the benefit of the doubt in assuming that we're not all a bunch of animals, can you at least use your brain and realize the unlikeliness of your question?
posted by The Light Fantastic at 11:17 AM on May 2, 2008

Our local police department has a no-chase policy, within the city limits, but the county sheriff's department doesn't, so the officers will often coordinate together on the radio, with the city officer following the suspect vehicle to the city limits, where the county officer will take over and has the authority to chase if necessary. It's not a perfect solution, but it does make things a little safer. And the county officers will call off a chase if things get too dangerous. Usually they only chase the suspect long enough to give another officer time to set up some spike strips further down the road.

For most jurisdictions, the policy decisions regarding to chase or not to chase are a dilemma, with pros and cons on both sides of the argument, and a lot of thought goes into them. What you see on television is not indicative of what most police departments do. That's why it's on television, because it's rare enough to be "entertaining."
posted by amyms at 11:37 AM on May 2, 2008

and it seems like when trying to stop a fugitive in a vehicle, that its almost as if they wait till they're in a populated area, with school children crossing the road, and whats that in background? a "gas" station! yeah, lets pick now, after 2 hours in the countryside, to spin him out.

but from the comments above, it seems like you guys are getting grossly mis-represented over here.

Well, yeah. I mean, they make shows with footage like that because they think it will get them ratings, not because it reflects any sort of normal police work, a lot of which is fairly dull and would make terrible television. I had a next-door neighbor who was a cop (in an urban area), and most of his days were spent driving around, talking to store owners or neighborhood watch groups or whatever, and paperwork. Sometimes exciting things happened: one time a drunk barfed on him.

So what you've got is a case of confirmation bias, really. No, not all cops do stuff like that - most don't. No, high-speed chases where the suspect rams a house/runs over a bunch of kids/etc. are not a regular thing. Like, at all. In most densely populated areas, most of the time a high-speed chase will get called off (or not started to begin with) unless the speeder is Really Really Wanted and Extra Dangerous, because the risk to everyone else is too great.
posted by rtha at 11:48 AM on May 2, 2008

The Light Fantastic Do you really think that you can rely on a show called "World's Wildest Police Chases," and come away with a real understanding of U.S. police procedure?

Obviously not. That's why I asked the question. There seems to me a fundamental disconnect between the nation where (to use the extreme example) a person could sue for being scalded by a cup of coffee and a nation where an officer could (to use an example from one of these shows) attempt to shoot out the tyres of a fleeing store burglary suspect before pursuing. The fact that this dash-cam footage is later released to an 'entertainment' show suggests that, while not by any means commonplace, these actions are at least tacitly accepted. My question was, 'Is that the case?' Does he fill in a report and carry on with work, or does he, as Pollomacho suggests, get suspended or fired for being reckless.

I'm sorry for your loss.
posted by boosh at 11:57 AM on May 2, 2008

You might look at Into the Kill Zone: A Cop's Eye View of Deadly Force. The book is completely based on primary source interviews with cops that have discharged their weapons. It goes through what the officers thought about deadly force, how they were trained, the thought process when they used deadly force (and when they choose not to but had good reason to) and the aftermath.

To answer your question, any use of deadly force is a big deal with lots of consequences, paperwork and often desk duty while they investigate. The book makes it very clear that this process is incredibly difficult on a lot of police officers as it makes them feel that despite following their training they are being punished for doing something right. A lot of them realize that it is the standard process and it is how it always is, but still they can't help but feel awful.

While it is highly jurisdictional, the book does cover general guidelines for when officers are allowed to use deadly force. And yes, if the police are authorized to use deadly force, it means deadly force. They shoot to kill. Always. There isn't the concept of disabling or disarming a person. Either the rules of engagement allow you to kill the suspect or you do nothing with your weapon.
posted by mmascolino at 12:20 PM on May 2, 2008

Do these shows specifically state that the police officers never have to defend their actions or decisions? Because otherwise I'm not sure why you would assume that. I'm sure "hours and hours of tedious paper work and boring trials following a high speed chase" doesn't get very good ratings.
posted by fermezporte at 12:26 PM on May 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

I just googled for "police shoot out tyres" and found several results but all from the UK: Oxford, Cardiff, North London.

This appears to be more of a UK police tactic than a US one.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:43 PM on May 2, 2008

TheophileEscargot: Part of the reason for that is that the spelling of "tyres" isn't something you see in the US; try "tires" and see where you get. A lot more US references.
posted by Tomorrowful at 12:53 PM on May 2, 2008

Ah, well spotted Tomorrowful.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:56 PM on May 2, 2008

The fact that this dash-cam footage is later released to an 'entertainment' show suggests that, while not by any means commonplace, these actions are at least tacitly accepted.

It's a public record and is normally released upon a request from the general, a lawyer in a related case, or the press. For instance.
posted by smackfu at 1:14 PM on May 2, 2008

There seems to me a fundamental disconnect between the nation where (to use the extreme example) a person could sue for being scalded by a cup of coffee and a nation where an officer could (to use an example from one of these shows) attempt to shoot out the tyres of a fleeing store burglary suspect before pursuing.

boosh: The coffee example isn't really a good one. While the headline is good, the actual facts make the case look quite warranted. The victim received 3rd degree burns, and research turned out that there were hundreds of other burn victims who had notified McDonald's of their injuries. The victim then attempted to sue for $20k (her medical costs.)

Beyond that, it came out that McDonald's was serving their coffee at abnormally high temperatures (180-190 degrees F) rather than the usual 140F temperature. McDonald's own experts testified that the coffee was not in fact drinkable at the temperature that they were serving it.

I must admit, that while I expect coffee to be hot, I expect spillage to be inconvenient and embarrassing, not an event that would remove all the skin from my lap, and leave me in the hospital for weeks.
posted by Project F at 2:56 PM on May 2, 2008 [1 favorite]

Here's another search that yields up a lot of very relevant results. Although I still think those shows rely on extreme outliers, there's no denying that this is an issue in the USA - I think mainly boosh is asking, is there concern about this, is there outcry, are their lawsuits and browsing through a couple dozen of those links make it clear that the answer to all three is yes.
posted by nanojath at 1:01 PM on May 3, 2008