Two people are dead in Pomona. A domestic violence call spiraled into a high-speed chase, ending in a twisted wreckage of metal and glass. The local news will frame this as a tragedy caused by a fleeing suspect. They’ll talk about the "heroic" efforts of the officers involved. They’ll focus on the domestic dispute that started it all.
They are missing the point.
The tragedy wasn’t just the crash. The tragedy was the decision to engage in a high-speed pursuit in a densely populated urban area for a non-violent property crime or a domestic dispute that had already moved from the home to the asphalt. We are addicted to the adrenaline of the chase, and that addiction is killing innocent bystanders. It is time to stop pretending that every "bad guy" needs to be hunted at 90 mph through a school zone.
The Myth of the Necessary Chase
The "lazy consensus" in law enforcement and local media is that if you don't chase, you're "soft on crime." The logic goes: if criminals know we won't chase them, they'll just drive away.
This is a logical fallacy. We have the technology to track a vehicle without a bumper-to-bumper pursuit. Between license plate readers (ALPRs), city-wide camera networks, and air support, the "need" to stay within twenty feet of a fleeing suspect's tailpipe is a relic of the 1970s.
Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) consistently shows that nearly 40% of pursuit-related fatalities are innocent bystanders. Think about that. We are willing to trade the lives of people coming home from grocery shopping for the chance to apprehend someone who might—or might not—have committed a crime.
I’ve seen departments burn through millions in settlements because they refused to acknowledge a simple truth: the presence of the police cruiser is what causes the suspect to drive faster. When the sirens stop, the suspect slows down. By chasing, we are the ones creating the very danger we claim to be protecting the public from.
The Physics of a Bad Decision
Let’s look at the raw mechanics. A standard police interceptor weighs roughly 4,000 to 5,000 pounds. At 80 mph, the kinetic energy is staggering.
$$K = \frac{1}{2}mv^2$$
In this equation, $v$ is squared. If you double your speed, you quadruple your kinetic energy. You quadruple the killing power of that vehicle. Most urban streets are designed for 35 mph. When you push a pursuit into those environments, you aren't "policing." You are launching a multi-ton kinetic projectile into a crowded room and hoping it doesn't hit anyone important.
The Pomona crash didn't happen because the suspect was a "good driver" or a "bad driver." It happened because the human brain is not wired to process complex urban variables at triple the speed limit while under high-stress physiological arousal. This applies to the suspect and the officer.
The Liability Gap Nobody Discusses
Cities love to talk about "public safety," but they rarely talk about the actuarial reality of pursuits. Every time a sergeant allows a pursuit to continue, they are signing a blank check with taxpayer money.
- Wrongful Death Claims: Average settlements for bystander deaths in pursuits often hit the seven-figure mark.
- Property Damage: The collateral damage to city infrastructure and private property is rarely fully recouped.
- Officer Disability: Pursuits are a leading cause of line-of-duty injuries that result in early retirement and massive pension payouts.
If a private corporation operated with this level of risk-to-reward ratio, the board would be fired within a week. But in municipal government, we call it "tough policing." It’s not tough. It’s fiscally and socially irresponsible.
The Technology Is Already Here (And We Aren't Using It)
We live in an era where we can track a lost iPhone to a specific sidewalk tile, yet we act like a 2015 Honda Civic is "invisible" once it turns a corner.
- StarChase Systems: These are GPS projectiles launched from the grill of a police car. You "tag" the suspect vehicle, back off, and track them from a screen. No high-speed chase. No civilian casualties. The suspect, thinking they’ve "gotten away," slows down to normal traffic speeds, making the eventual arrest far safer.
- Drone Integration: A drone can travel at 60 mph in a straight line, over buildings and traffic. It doesn't need to stop at red lights. It doesn't risk T-boning a minivan.
- Predictive Interdiction: Using ALPR data to find where the suspect lives or works and picking them up there.
Why aren't these the standard? Because they aren't "exciting." They don't make for good recruitment videos. They don't satisfy the lizard-brain urge for a "catch."
The Domestic Violence Disconnect
The Pomona incident allegedly began with a domestic violence call. This is the ultimate "justification" used by departments to continue a chase. "We have to catch him; he's a violent offender!"
Let's dissect that. If the suspect has already left the scene of the domestic dispute, the immediate danger to the victim has—in that specific moment—shifted. By engaging in a high-speed pursuit, you are not protecting the victim. You are now endangering the victim (if they are in the car) and every other person on the road.
If the goal is victim safety, the strategy should be covert surveillance and a tactical takedown at a stationary location. Instead, we turn the streets into a war zone, often ending in a crash that kills the very person the police were called to "save."
Addressing the "What If" Fearmongers
People always ask: "If we stop chasing, won't everyone just run?"
The answer is: Some will. But they already do. The difference is that when they run and aren't chased, they don't drive like they're in a Mad Max film for ten miles. They drive fast for two blocks, look in the rearview mirror, see no lights, and then try to blend in.
I’ve worked with agencies that implemented "No-Chase" policies for anything other than a confirmed violent felony in progress. Guess what happened? Crime didn't skyrocket. Civilian deaths dropped. Officer injuries dropped. Litigation dropped.
The "tough on crime" crowd hates this because it removes the theater of authority. It turns policing into a boring, administrative task of tracking and apprehending rather than a high-stakes action movie.
The High Cost of the "Win"
We have conditioned officers to view a fleeing suspect as a personal challenge to their authority. This is "contempt of cop" on wheels. When an officer is in a pursuit, their heart rate often exceeds 150 beats per minute. Fine motor skills vanish. Tunnel vision sets in. This is the worst possible state for a human being to be in while operating heavy machinery.
In Pomona, two people paid the ultimate price for this adrenaline-fueled doctrine. We can keep calling these "accidents," or we can call them what they actually are: predictable outcomes of an obsolete policy.
Stop demanding "more" policing and start demanding smarter policing. The next time you see a "breaking news" clip of a high-speed chase, don't cheer for the PIT maneuver. Ask yourself why the city is okay with using your neighborhood as a racetrack for a suspect who could have been picked up at a gas station two hours later.
The pursuit of justice shouldn't require a body count of people who were just trying to get home.
Get the police off the gas pedal. Use the satellites. Use the drones. Use your brains. The era of the "cowboy" chase needs to end before the next innocent family ends up in a body bag because a suspect decided to run and a cop decided to follow.
