Well, police shouldn’t be engaging in car chases. This might not be a very egregious case, but police chases often end very poorly and result in dead cops, dead suspects, and/or dead civilians. Personal property for civilians also tend to get caught in the crossfire. Suspects of color also are treated more harshly, and often receive an extrajudicial death.
The bigger problem is police enforcing laws that criminalize rather than reduce harm. Drug trafficking is bad, but it’s incentivized because users of illegal drugs get treated as criminals rather than people in need of medical treatment.
What should police do when someone chooses not to be pulled over?
Is it just an automatic give up because they happen to be in a car? They can do whatever they want and it’s not worth trying to enforce anymore?
I agree high speed chases are terrible… but there is no other solution. Checking their plates only works if they aren’t obscured, and if police weren’t allowed to chase, there isn’t much disincentive to obscure your plates and just refuse to pull over.
Mail them a ticket. That’s it. Unless the person fleeing is KNOWN to be a serious danger to others, in the sense that they are likely to hurt or kill someone.
A chase is somewhat justified, for instance, in the situation of someone driving around in a completely maniacal way that is nearly certain to result in injury or death of a third party.
If someone decides to run, then no police should not take chase. If it’s an infraction like speeding, the officer can record the plates and issue a fine for the infraction as well as evading police officers. You know, like what happens when police take chase.
Can you address the other part, how to deal with people obscuring their plates… it’s already way too common, what would happen if obscured plates and not pulling over meant you couldn’t be caught for any crime? Car chases are sometimes currently the only way to solve a problem that needs to be solved. And no matter how safe the officers try to make it, which most of them do, there is of course automatically elevated risk.
Ideally we need a different solution, but we don’t have one yet.
Obscured plates? There’s a guy in NYC that goes around and fixes them on parked cars. (NYPD can’t be bothered.) That seems like a fine way, though, tow and impound the cars when they’re parked.
But there’d be no chase, no inherent danger, no exciting video for the 6:00 News, and no 'roided up cops would get the chance to say, “You think you can run from me, fucker?”
Just because this particular chase didn’t go bad doesn’t make it a good thing or an argument for police chases. This both an exception to the rule and the best case scenario. Most chases don’t end like this. Most chases end with at least one person dead, usually the suspect. Remember, innocent until proven guilty. It’s not a good thing for cops to kill suspects that run.
Police selectively enforce laws all the time. Drug policy needs to change, but police don’t need to enforce it the way they do. Enforcement in the war on drugs is highly discriminatory, so it takes a joint effort between police not enforcing and politicians changing these laws for the change to happen.
Well, police shouldn’t be engaging in car chases. This might not be a very egregious case, but police chases often end very poorly and result in dead cops, dead suspects, and/or dead civilians. Personal property for civilians also tend to get caught in the crossfire. Suspects of color also are treated more harshly, and often receive an extrajudicial death.
The bigger problem is police enforcing laws that criminalize rather than reduce harm. Drug trafficking is bad, but it’s incentivized because users of illegal drugs get treated as criminals rather than people in need of medical treatment.
What should police do when someone chooses not to be pulled over?
Is it just an automatic give up because they happen to be in a car? They can do whatever they want and it’s not worth trying to enforce anymore?
I agree high speed chases are terrible… but there is no other solution. Checking their plates only works if they aren’t obscured, and if police weren’t allowed to chase, there isn’t much disincentive to obscure your plates and just refuse to pull over.
Mail them a ticket. That’s it. Unless the person fleeing is KNOWN to be a serious danger to others, in the sense that they are likely to hurt or kill someone.
A chase is somewhat justified, for instance, in the situation of someone driving around in a completely maniacal way that is nearly certain to result in injury or death of a third party.
Mail them a ticket how? They would have no idea who they are with an obscured plate.
If someone decides to run, then no police should not take chase. If it’s an infraction like speeding, the officer can record the plates and issue a fine for the infraction as well as evading police officers. You know, like what happens when police take chase.
Can you address the other part, how to deal with people obscuring their plates… it’s already way too common, what would happen if obscured plates and not pulling over meant you couldn’t be caught for any crime? Car chases are sometimes currently the only way to solve a problem that needs to be solved. And no matter how safe the officers try to make it, which most of them do, there is of course automatically elevated risk.
Ideally we need a different solution, but we don’t have one yet.
Obscured plates? There’s a guy in NYC that goes around and fixes them on parked cars. (NYPD can’t be bothered.) That seems like a fine way, though, tow and impound the cars when they’re parked.
But there’d be no chase, no inherent danger, no exciting video for the 6:00 News, and no 'roided up cops would get the chance to say, “You think you can run from me, fucker?”
And all that is the whole point of the chase.
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Just because this particular chase didn’t go bad doesn’t make it a good thing or an argument for police chases. This both an exception to the rule and the best case scenario. Most chases don’t end like this. Most chases end with at least one person dead, usually the suspect. Remember, innocent until proven guilty. It’s not a good thing for cops to kill suspects that run.
Police selectively enforce laws all the time. Drug policy needs to change, but police don’t need to enforce it the way they do. Enforcement in the war on drugs is highly discriminatory, so it takes a joint effort between police not enforcing and politicians changing these laws for the change to happen.
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The police are not required to know the laws in the US
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Their job is not to enforce laws
You don’t understand this issue. You’re wasting your breath, talking about something you obviously don’t know about about.
The facts that they gave chase, risking the lives of innocent bystanders, for any traffic violation is a serious problem. Period.
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