Officers face the risk of injury partially because of the people within the communities in which they serve. I refer not to the accidental injury caused by a clumsy moment, but instead by the actions required of an officer attempting to enforce the law. Foot pursuits are accompanied by high risk because of associated accidental and intentional injuries. Kaminski, DiGiovanni, and Downs (2004) reported that the prevalence of injury during arrest incident to a foot pursuit were higher than a typical arrest. Kaminski (2007) found that most injuries sustained during a foot pursuit were accidental and very few were received from the suspect they were chasing. Additionally, Kaminski, Rojek, Smith, and Alpert (2012) asserted that there continues to be a scarce amount of …show more content…
Vehicle pursuits pose a substantially higher risk to the safety of police officers due to the heightened level of situational awareness that is needed. Alpert (1997) claimed that the, “vast majority of vehicle pursuits are initiated for minor criminal or traffic offenses” (as cited by Johnson, 2013, p. 77). In addition, Alpert, Dunham, and Stroshine (2006) found that, “40 percent resulted in property damage” and, “almost half resulted in physical injuries” (as cited by Johnson, 2013, p. 77). In a vehicle pursuit the officer must be focused on the suspect, but more so on the safety of the public, which includes vehicles and pedestrians (Schultz, Hudak, & Alpert, 2009). Police cruisers are outfitted with sirens and the well-known red and blue light bars, but in the busy world we live in, they may not be heard or seen. In these cases it takes a well-trained officer with split-second decision-making skills to maneuver the vehicle in the safest path possible. Unfortunately, this may lead to a wreck with little to no choice by the officer. On the other hand, vehicle pursuits that end with a wreck may not be from accidental causes at
This study was created by Lt. Wells on behalf of the Florida Highway Patrol. Lt. Wells was a member of the Law Enforcement Stops and Safety Subcommittee. This committee is volunteer-based and works under the financial support of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and is affiliated with the International Association of Chiefs of Police. As a me...
Marques, O. (2013, October 7). Police Operations [Lecture]. SSCI 1000 Introduction to Criminal Justice. University of Ontario Institute of Technology. Retrieved November 18, 2013
Imagine being a police officer doing your daily routine job. You are in a patrol car on the highway, watching the cars and trucks drive by. You are also looking for speeders to warn them to be more careful and maybe you’ll ticket them. It has been a very boring day for you, since you have only been called on your radio once, and it was for an accident (fender bender). Almost at the end of your shift, a blue car drives by going ninety miles an hour, but you know the speed limit is only fifty-five miles an hour. You pull the patrol car out of the gravel area that you had been sitting in and you start to follow the car. You put your lights on and catch up to them. After a few minutes you pull the person over. You get out of the car and start walking over towards the blue car. You are right about to talk to the driver and he drives off, leaving nothing but dust in your face. Now, the adrenaline is pumping in your body, but what should you do? You could call for backup or follow the blue car. Anything could happen. How far should you actually go? This is the question that will be answered in this paper. I will explain what police pursuit is and some different things officers do during a pursuit. I will also give some statistics about the fatalities that have happened in a police pursuit. I will also illustrate my opinion about how far police pursuits should go.
According to Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown (1974), patrol is the “backbone” of police work. This belief is based around the premise that the mere presence of police officers on patrol prohibits criminal activity. Despite increasing budgets and the availability of more officers on the streets, crime rates still rose with the expanding metropolitan populations (Kelling et al., 1974). A one year experiment to determine the effectiveness of routine preventive patrol would be conducted, beginning on the first day of October 1972, and ending on the last day of September 1973.
Smith, M. R., Petrocelli, M., & Scheer, C. (2007). Excessive force, civil liability, and the taser in
To begin with police officers faces more dangers than the average American citizen, “generally police are about three times as likely to be killed on the job as the average American” (Blako). “Some of the most important hazards police face are assaults, vehicle crashes, being struck by vehicles, stress, overexertion, and falls” (LaTourrette). Traffic stops make up a majority of the police deaths, but most of those deaths do not have to do with responding to the scene of a crime or the pursuit of a criminal suspect. Most would believe police have the most dangerous jobs in the world, yet many do not die in the line of duty. Police shows like Cops give the American population a false sense of danger when it comes day to day work of an officer. They only show the action to keep viewers interested because if you watching the normal stopping of a citizen to get a speeding ticket or to tell them a lights out the show would not be on anymore. If you do see an everyday traffic stop it is because something bad is about to happen like an oncoming vehicle probably not paying attention resul...
Police officers encounter many chases throughout their careers. High speed chases are the most common. They risk their lives in order to stop the criminals before they endanger someone else’s life. Road blocks are used to crack down on drunk driving, drug users, and also driving without a license or insurance. It is a police officer’s job to insure that each victim, witness, and criminals deserve to be treated with respect and compassion.
Lewis and Graves v. Thomas are two court rulings related to police pursuits. In both cases, the court ruled that a police officer in pursuit of a fleeing motorist does not intentionally choose to cause harm to a suspect, and resulting injury or death of the suspect is not due to the negligence of the officer and the officer and agency is therefore not liable (Farber, 2007). However, through the multitude of incidents involving police officers in traffic accidents, there is no case law placing liability on a police officer or agency, unless the officer was in violation of departmental policy or grossly negligent, as shown in Haynes v. Hamilton County (Justia.com, 2017). In this case, a sheriff’s deputy pursued a vehicle reaching speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour in dense traffic. The pursuit ended when the suspect vehicle collided with a civilian vehicle, killing three teenagers. The court ruled the failure of the officer to terminate for safety reasons was thereby
For many individuals, police brutality is a non-existent matter because it does not directly affect them or the community in which they live. Yet for others, this is an everyday occurrence and few limitations have been set as to what is unjust and malicious behavior of an officer towards the public, therefore, several officers are rarel...
Police brutality is a very real problem that many Americans face today. The police carry an enormous burden each day. Police work is very stressful and involves many violent and dangerous situations. In many confrontations the police are put in a position in which they may have to use force to control the situation. There are different levels of force and the situation dictates the level use most of the time. The police have very strict rules about police use force and the manner in which they use it. In this paper I will try to explain the many different reason the police cross the line, and the many different people that this type of behavior effects. There are thousands of reports each year of assaults and ill treatment against officers who use excessive force and violate the human rights of their victims. In some cases the police have injured and even killed people through the use of excessive force and brutal treatment. The use of excessive force is a criminal act and I will try and explore the many different factors involved in these situations.
It is a myth to believe that an officers job is spend fighting dangerous crimes, in reality officers spend more time handing smaller cases. For example, police officers spend a lot of time doing daily tasks such as giving speeding tickets and being mediators in disputes (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Handing out speeding tickers and handling minor disputes are far from fighting crime. Police officers spend more time doing preventive measures (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Preventive measures involve officers intervening to prevent further altercations. Victor Kappeler and Gary Potter discussed the myth of crime fighting as invalid and misleading notions of an officer’s employment.
Everyday law enforcement personal have the possibility to face dangerous events in their daily duties. In performing such duties a police officer could come by a seemingly ordinary task, and in a blink of an eye the event can turn threatening and possible deadly. When or if this happens to an officer they won’t have
Stetser, Merle (2001). The Use of Force in Police Control of Violence: Incidents Resulting in Assaults on Officers. New York: LFB Scholarly Publishing L.L.C.
There is also another side to police pursuits with its own troubling statistics. We know that when a pursuit begins it usually ends up causing accidents, injuries, and can some times even be fatal. Critics claim that most of these pursuits are unjustified. Some people say that the suspects flee because they don’t have insurance or their license is revoked. They also say most of them are young and act on impulse and make a bad decision to run. Sometimes it ends up killing innocent people that are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Officer Kimberly Raso engaged two shoplifters from a store and pursued them in a parking lot that escalated into a deadly force situation. Raso was sued because she killed one of the suspects but was later found not guilty as a result of the case (Peck, 1999). Contrary to the lawsuit, any officer can be sued for engaging a deadly force scenario that results in the suspect being killed by the officer. However, this particular lawsuit was more in-depth and challenged the authenticity of the officer because she was working as a security guard rather than a full-time police officer, and the suspects thought she would not and could not shoot at them (Peck, 1999). In theory, there are no off-duty periods for law enforcement officers as they are entitled to respond to threats 24 hours a day, and that creates the levels of stress that comes with the job (Bethel,