"19-year-old Jayce and 18-year-old Madison were riding in Jayce’s car on May 8 with plans to go fishing together when another car drove at them head-first as they got off of US-74.
The person who hit them head-on was trying to escape a Forsyth County deputy after investigators said he stole a car on Old School House Road. The suspect also died in the crash."
Love how the police believe killing two teens after chasing someone the wrong way is protecting the community.
For a lot of police hate, I can see, but why do people get upset about pursuits like this? I’m aware of the “property is insured and life can’t be” aspect.
But the other side of that coin of “do not pursue” is saying that the person wasn’t an inherent danger. It lifts blamme from a car thief stealing my single most valuable posession, to the police attempting to stop them, which is their job. A thief has unknown motives at the time of theft. A man running away cannot legally be shot (you have an uphill court case) because he is no longer a danger, but a car is a constant danger. We have a permit for it because it’s a 2,000 pound hunk of metal. Comparing a stolen car to an active shooter wouldn’t be a far off comparison, because you don’t know the motive for which it was stolen and if the perpetrator is retreating. These are two legal things to be proven. Furthering this, it means states will use more fucking cameras on highways watching us to ticket anyone 1mph over, under the guise of “watching for stolen cars”. Stealing groceries to survive is one thing, but stealing a car is pure “fuck the owner”. There’s no looking the other way because “they needed it”
I realize it’s a whataboutism, but I feel like there be an extreme outrage if a stolen car drove through a crowd and the cops had had the opportunity to pursue it a month beforehand but had been made not to. Can someone clarify how this doesnt become more common or possible under “no pursuits”. It’s not that I don’t feel bad for the families, losing their kids to some jagoff sucks, but want to understand the other side of this.
High speed chases are dangerous, just going to mention that.
A client at my work got into a bad accident with the police because they were chasing some guy. I don’t have all the details, but he ended up in the hospital and lost a lot of his tools (he’s some sort of construction contractor, tools all over the 4-lane intersection).
That does suck and I’m sorry they had to deal with that.
The “some guy” ought to be held liable for the tools and medical bills and his vehicle.
Because car chases put everyone’s life in danger, not just the suspect and police. They can often find the pros after the fact anyway because there’s usually a mountain of evidence. It’s safest for the public to let them go, and pick them up later at home
Stealing a car is closer to running from police though. Usually a car is stolen to get away from another crime, not just “I want this car really badly”. Most criminals steal cars and ditch them within a couple hours. Police chasing is whats making them speed and act dangerously. No police chase means no speeding in 90% of cases because they want to be inconspicuous.
You’re assuming that all car thefts are by someone intending to use them as a lethal weapon?
I’m assuming there is no clear indication of intent. Part of crime prevention is that if you don’t know a variable, you must account for the worst possible outcome, and then work all your solutions down from there. At worst you have solution A. Next best is solution B and so on. The immediate response of police is based on those factors, in this case they don’t know why the car was stolen, and the likelihood of the person getting away used to be really high because we didn’t live in a surveillance state, so chasing a perpetrator was just what you did.
My closing paragraph was about the worst possible outcome. What if the absolute worst happen, would there be outrage at police because they didn’t pursue earlier? Does it put police in a catch 22? If that part isn’t figured out, then it will die in committee because no legislative body will (generally) allow their executive arm to be liable on both sides of their actions.
Reckless car chases have a much higher probability of the worst possible outcome. Property is not more precious than human life, no matter what cops like to believe.
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