NCJ Number
193790
Date Published
2001
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This study examined the extent to which municipalities under a State mandate to adopt written guidelines for police pursuits complied with the mandate; the content of the written pursuit guidelines were also analyzed.
Abstract
The State, which is referred to by the pseudonym "Atlantic" for the purposes of this report, issued the mandate after a man successfully sued an Atlantic municipality in 1995 on behalf of his wife after she was killed by a vehicle being chased by a police officer. A cover letter and questionnaire were mailed to all of the 2,582 Atlantic municipalities, and 689 municipalities responded (27 percent). A total of 226 of the respondents reported that the municipality did not have its own police department, leaving 463 responses for analysis. The survey findings indicated that the vast majority of Atlantic municipalities complied with the State mandate by implementing written pursuit guidelines. The majority of the municipalities adopted written procedures that adequately addressed critical issues outlined in the model pursuit guideline published by the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice. This includes decision-making criteria for the initiation and termination of pursuits. Almost three-fourths of the respondents reported that they prohibited high-speed pursuits for suspected minor violations such as traffic offenses. Other issues addressed in most guidelines were traffic congestion, weather conditions, the use of roadblocks and ramming techniques, the use of unmarked police units, the use of firearms during pursuits, radio procedures, and the maintenance of pursuit episode records. Only 53.02 percent of respondents, however, had an internal review process in place for analyzing pursuit episodes; and only 11.13 percent of responding departments used the "stop stick" (a device for deflating the tires of fleeing suspects). 2 tables, 20 references, and 7 notes