High speed pursuits and the risks and liability officers take while in pursuit - Research Paper Example

Falling prey to this act are the innocent drivers and pedestrians who have nothing to do with the scene. Researches tell us that in USA about 350 people lose their lives every year as a result of police pursuits. According to other researches 2,500 get killed and 55,000 are injured per year. There has always been a serious debate on whether chasing should be done for every crime or just for the very serious ones. Because no matter how hard they try to drive safely, lives are taken. Several researches have been made to analyze how serious the result of pursuits is in light of the number of lives taken, and how often it occurs.

According to a research conducted between 1994 and 2002, it has been found out that in these 8 years 2,654 deadly crashes had occurred involving 3,965 vehicles in which 3,146 people were critically injured. Out of these people 1,088 of them were not even in the vehicle, meaning they were innocent. So this research can be concluded by saying that the deaths by accident, over those 8 years were 1,088; an average of 121 people per year. This gets even more disturbing when the police are chasing for a person who hasn’t done anything violent and someone is killed because of it.

Before this act police should realize if it is more important to chase after the guilty, or to save several souls. They should not forget that there are certain other ways to chase, one of which is by helicopters. Besides that, stop sticks are used by officers for this cause. This stripped diffuses a certain amount of air from the suspects tire. In this way, officers can wait for the suspect’s vehicle to slow down and then easily catch them. This method is used by a lot of agencies, like departments in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Utah Highway Patrol, and the Pennsylvania State Police to increase effectiveness and reduce the risks of accidents.

Despite all the risks and the rate of accidents,