THANQUARIUS CALHOUN liked to run from cops. In 2010, he fled from police in Georgia twice and was arrested for it each time. The next year he fled and was arrested again. On May 3, 2013, he did it again. Then, 11 days later, he ran from the cops for the very last time.
On that Tuesday afternoon, Calhoun, who was born and raised in Henry County, Georgia, was caught speeding on I-85, heading north, when a Banks County sheriff’s deputy put on his lights to pull the gray Toyota Corolla over for a traffic stop. Calhoun decided to hit the gas instead of the brakes and make a run for it, as he had so many times in the past. Police officers from Banks County, Franklin County, and eventually the Georgia State Patrol chased him at speeds exceeding 120 mph, with Calhoun and his pursuers weaving around cars on the highway.
At 2:03 p.m., after 14 minutes and 21 miles of pursuit, Trooper Donnie O’Neal Saddler decided that Calhoun had to be stopped to protect the lives of innocent people on the highway. Saddler pulled his car alongside Calhoun’s and performed, at 111 mph, what is called a Precision Immobilization Technique, or PIT maneuver, making contact with the back of Calhoun’s car and causing it to spin clockwise and careen off the side of the highway across the rumble strips and into a small embankment, eventually striking a tree. Calhoun was completely ejected from the car and sustained major injuries, but somehow survived.
Thanquarius Calhoun
Photo: Courtesy of Calhoun family
Morton, whom I was not able to interview for this article, must have been stunned to be alive and relatively unharmed. The crash was so violent that the car’s roof was ripped completely off. The car looked flattened, like a tank had ridden over it. In one of the police dashcam videos that shows the crash, pieces of the car fly dozens of feet in the air toward the camera. According to a report by the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team, “The damage to the Toyota Corolla was too extensive to describe all the damage.” It seems almost impossible that two people survived.
Marion Shore was not so lucky. She was sitting in the passenger seat, wearing her seatbelt, but the force of the crash was so strong that she was partially ejected from the car while it was flipping and rolling. Shore, the mother of a 3-year-old boy, was trapped halfway inside the car, in an in-between place where death was certain. The car rolled over her several times. The chief medical examiner for the state of Georgia examined Shore’s body and said in court that, as the car was rolling, the forces propelling it “literally bent her body almost in half.”
THE PIT MANEUVER is a modified version of an anti-terrorist driving tactic that has been taught for four decades by BSR, a private training facility in West Virginia that works with U.S. military and law enforcement personnel. According to BSR, the technique was originally developed by Germany’s federal police to give security details the ability to take out a car that was threatening a convoy. In 1985, the maneuver was developed by the Fairfax County, Virginia, police department in order to end pursuits with little danger to police or the general public.
This is how it is supposed to work: An officer pulls alongside a fleeing vehicle so that the officer’s front bumper is just ahead of the other vehicle’s back bumper. The officer matches the fleeing driver’s speed, gently touches — not rams — the other vehicle, and then makes a quick quarter turn of the wheel toward it. The other car then spins out safely to a stop. According to California Highway Patrol instructions, “The key to proper execution of the PIT is finesse. Ideally, the initial contact with the subject vehicle should be so gentle the operator of the subject vehicle is not aware that contact has been made.” It’s a difficult maneuver to learn, even for seasoned police officers, because the training goes up against a lifetime of being told not to touch things with your moving vehicle, especially other cars. Officers are generally trained on closed roadways at speeds between 25 and 40 mph. The PIT is now used by agencies throughout the U.S., and if used correctly at slow speeds and in the right circumstances — little traffic, no bystanders, open road — it can be an effective and predictable method to cut short pursuits and save lives. At high speeds, it becomes a deadly force technique, a way to stop a driver at all costs. As one expert put it, the PIT would only be predictable at high speeds if performed “on an airport runway.”
One state agency in particular, the Georgia State Patrol, empowered by its vague, unrestrictive PIT maneuver policy, has been using the PIT at high speeds. Yet responsibility for the deaths of innocent passengers has been placed completely on the drivers whose cars were “pitted.” Thanquarius Calhoun, just 21 years old when he was caught speeding and decided to flee, received a life sentence for the death of his friend Marion Shore.
No comprehensive or reliable data has been collected on the PIT maneuver’s use nationwide, and no true empirical studies have been done on its effectiveness or safety. What little is known can be found only piecemeal, hidden within notoriously incomplete data on police pursuits in general.
Map: The Intercept
Just over half of state law enforcement agencies train their officers in the PIT maneuver. Some call it “tactical vehicle interception,” or TVI, and in Kentucky they call it “legal intervention,” but it’s the same technique. You can get pitted on highways running the entire West Coast and in the Southeast from Florida to Virginia. You can get pitted driving from Michigan all the way to California, unless you go through North Dakota, Wyoming, or Montana. The Northeast is mostly PIT-free, with the exceptions of Maine, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. You can get pitted in Arkansas, Indiana, and Iowa. Texas’ Highway Patrol, with more than 2,000 troopers, is now piloting the PIT maneuver, and the Highway Patrol in South Carolina began using it in April 2015. Those are just the state agencies, and don’t include the roughly 18,000 city, county, and local agencies nationwide, each with its own ever-evolving policy on pursuits.
Although some state police agencies refused to reveal the details of their PIT maneuver policies (and in the case of Missouri, whether or not the PIT is used), the policies I have seen vary greatly. Most state that you should never pit a motorcycle or vehicles carrying hazardous materials. Some emphasize that you should take into account the condition of the road, visibility, pedestrians, traffic volume, and if there are other occupants in the car. The Florida Highway Patrol’s PIT policy, for example, tells officers to consider their proximity to blind curves, highway grades, bridges, guardrails, barriers, other traffic, freeway ramps, and roadside obstacles such as rocks, trees, deep ditches, signs, utility posts, traffic islands, and curbs.
Some agencies do not specify the type of eluder who can be pitted, whereas some make clear it must be someone who has committed, or is suspected of having committed, a felony. The Nevada Highway Patrol’s policy states that a PIT cannot be performed unless “the suspect is an actual or suspected felon who reasonably appears to represent a serious threat to society if not apprehended.” Some agencies require supervisory approval before an officer can pit; others prefer that the officer simply use good judgment.
Where the biggest differences lie is in perhaps the most important aspect: speed. Some agencies have very strict caps on the maximum speed at which a PIT maneuver can be performed, some have speed recommendations, and some omit any mention of speed whatsoever. The California Highway Patrol sets a hard cap of 35 mph, as recommended by the department that developed the technique in Fairfax County, Virginia. According to Don Gotthardt, a spokesperson for the Fairfax police department, “We know with great certainty where a violator will end up at speeds 45 mph or lower.” Indiana State Police sets the cap at 50 mph, Michigan State Police and New Hampshire State Police cap it at 40 mph, and Iowa State Patrol caps it at 35 mph. In Virginia and Washington, state agencies require supervisory approval if an officer is going to pit at more than 40 mph, and in Oregon and Wisconsin, the PIT is considered use of deadly force if performed above 35 mph, so officers better have a damn good reason to use it.
THE GEORGIA STATE PATROL’S PIT policy states that “if the trooper or troopers in the pursuit determine that the fleeing vehicle must be stopped immediately to safeguard life and preserve public safety, the PIT maneuver may be used.” The policy does not specify a maximum speed, and Georgia appears to be by far the most aggressive of all state agencies when it comes to using the technique. While several agencies have policies without speed caps, the information I gathered shows a huge discrepancy in total maneuvers performed, and injuries and deaths resulting from them, between the Georgia State Patrol and other state agencies that use the PIT.
Since Georgia began using the PIT maneuver in 1998, at least 28 people have been killed and 296 injured in PIT-related pursuits, the vast majority of them riding in the fleeing vehicle. That number certainly understates the problem because data is either partially or entirely missing for eight of those years. The data I was able to collect was pieced together from open records requests, courts exhibits and depositions, and Georgia State Patrol reports. As far as I can determine, the agency has performed more than 1,100 PIT maneuvers since 1998, and 2015 had the largest annual number yet, with 155 performed. Roughly 20 percent of Georgia State Patrol pursuits involve a PIT maneuver, and the agency has never punished an officer for using it inappropriately.
In comparison, California’s Highway Patrol, which collects statistics from its own officers as well as from other California law enforcement agencies, listed 967 pursuits terminated with a PIT maneuver since 2002, about 1 percent of total pursuits, with only one death and 83 injuries. Minnesota’s State Patrol recorded 225 PITs since 2008, with no deaths and five minor injuries. The North Carolina State Highway Patrol reported 303 PIT maneuvers, with no deaths, since 2007. (North Carolina does not record injuries.) Maine’s State Police reported 17 PITs since 2012, with no injuries or deaths. Nebraska’s State Patrol reported 25 PITs, with two injuries and no deaths, since 2013. Indiana reported only five PIT maneuvers performed since 2009 and no injuries or deaths. Virginia State Police has trained officers in the PIT since January 2015, but none have performed the maneuver on duty.
There have also been fatalities in Nevada, Oklahoma, and Washington, but when you Google “PIT maneuver” and “death,” most of the hits point you to Georgia, specifically the Georgia State Patrol. Thanquarius Calhoun’s case provides some recent insight into what’s happening in Georgia, but an incident from more than 10 years ago reveals more details: the crash that resulted in the deaths of Katie Sharp and Garrett Gabe.
A Georgia State Patrol trooper vehicle.
Photo: Shaun Raviv
ON THE MORNING of August 17, 2004, 21-year-old Katie Sharp was driving her parents’ Nissan Pathfinder from Pennsylvania to her home in Holly Hill, Florida. In the car with Sharp was her boyfriend, 17-year-old Garrett Gabe. They were heading southbound on I-95 in South Carolina when she was caught speeding by Colleton County sheriff’s deputies. Sharp was doing 86 in a 70-mph zone. Perhaps because she had initially taken the car without her parents’ permission, or perhaps because she had run out of gas earlier that morning and had been chewed out by a police officer who saw her on the side of the road, or perhaps because her license had recently been suspended due to traffic violations, Sharp failed to stop when the sirens came on. Instead, she sped forward toward home, where her parents and young child were waiting for her.
Nobody will ever know exactly what was going through her head when she decided to try to outrun the cops — a terrible idea in almost any circumstances — because after leading officers on a high-speed chase for 50 miles in South Carolina, Sharp’s car entered Georgia. “They won’t get past my two, trust me,” a Georgia State Patrol dispatcher told a South Carolina dispatcher as the chase crossed state lines. They didn’t. Georgia took over the chase, and the 75-mile pursuit ended just 53 seconds after Trooper William Scott Fisher joined it.
Fisher saw Sharp driving erratically and dangerously at very high speeds. Hoping to save innocent bystanders, he later said, he pitted her SUV, which was traveling at 107 mph. The vehicle spun off the highway, clockwise, hurtling 400 feet over an embankment and into a tree. Both Katie Sharp and Garrett Gabe were killed. “The trooper executed his training. He acted properly,” said a Georgia State Patrol spokesperson. “It was a long, dangerous chase, and we felt we needed to stop it before some innocent bystander got killed.” Of course, an innocent bystander named Garrett Gabe did get killed. He just happened to be inside the car.
Katie Sharp
Photo: Good Morning America
Trooper Fisher didn’t even know why he was chasing Sharp. In a deposition, he said he assumed she had committed some serious crime or felony because she was being chased across state lines. In reality, the crime that started the chase was a simple moving violation. Fisher said, “I absolutely wanted to end the pursuit to save innocent people on the road that day. The way she was driving with total disregard, the way she was traveling, I thought she was going to kill somebody. I thought there was a certain death fixing to occur.” Instead, it was Fisher’s PIT maneuver that resulted in the deaths of two people, one of whom was utterly innocent. The other was guilty of speeding. “I just don’t think it’s right,” Charles Sharp, Katie’s father and a former police officer, told me. “He was judge, jury, and executioner in less than two miles.”
THE MOST STRIKING statements in the Sharp case came from Soffie Thigpen, the first female captain in the history of the Georgia State Patrol. Thigpen, who initially brought the PIT maneuver to Georgia, was a lieutenant at the time. In her 2006 deposition, Thigpen called the PIT maneuver that killed Katie Sharp and her boyfriend a “picture perfect” example and said that it would be perfectly reasonable to perform the maneuver at speeds most vehicles can’t even reach. “It’s okay to do a PIT from zero to whatever the car will run,” said Thigpen, “whether it be a hundred, 150 or 190, or 30.”
Geoffrey Alpert, an expert on high-risk police activities at the University of South Carolina, who was a paid consultant on the Sharp case, called Thigpen’s words “a shocking statement from someone who’s in a decision-making status in that department and training officers to conduct the PIT.” He said, “She’ll pit anything at any speed.”
When I reached Thigpen, now retired, on the phone, she reiterated her support for the maneuver. “The PIT’s probably the greatest technique that we’ve been doing in Georgia. It’s sending out a message that we won’t tolerate bad people running over folks. If you don’t stop, we’re going to stop you. It’s just that simple.” Her take is that the PIT has saved lives by stopping chases before they go on too long. “I never did understand why anybody thought there should be a speed limit on it. I never could get that,” she said in her deposition. At the time, 12 people had died as a result of PIT maneuvers in Georgia. “On paper, 12 fatalities is a large number, but when you look at the number of PITs and the possible lives that have been saved, the number is small in comparison.”
It’s certainly possible that lives have been saved as a result of PIT maneuvers, but the cars driven by Katie Sharp and Thanquarius Calhoun, which each held passengers as innocent as any bystander on the street, were purposefully pitted at extreme speeds. Counterfeit money was found at the scene of Calhoun’s wreck, but police didn’t know about it at the time of the pursuit, and no one was charged with possessing it. Both cars had been identified by their license plates well before the PIT maneuver was performed, and it would not have been difficult to track the drivers down and put them in jail at a later time if they truly were never going to stop.
At the time of Sharp’s death, the Georgia State Patrol’s PIT maneuver policy consisted of two sentences. It said merely that officers must use the PIT in accordance with training and “at reasonable speeds and in locations where it is reasonable to expect that the maneuver can be safely accomplished.” The policy has since been revised, but still allows officers plenty of leeway in determining a “reasonable speed” when performing the PIT in a given situation. The factors they must now consider are:
a) Whether the violator is showing total disregard for public safety
b) Whether the violator is slowing but not stopping for stop signs or other traffic control devices
c) Whether the violator is darting at other vehicles
d) Whether the violator is driving on the wrong side of the road
e) Whether the violator is running other motorists off the road
Trooper Fisher admitted that he didn’t know how fast he was going when he pitted Sharp’s car. One expert brought in from Oklahoma said, “You can’t look at your speedometer and try to position yourself to the back of the vehicle and know what is ahead of you. You can’t do all that.” The Georgia State Patrol was comfortable with an officer performing a PIT maneuver on Sharp with no knowledge of his own speed — which happened to be 107 mph — while working under a policy in which “reasonable speed” was a key determinant. According to an internal affairs document, Trooper Fisher “acted in accordance with his training and within departmental policy.”
The 11th Circuit threw out the lawsuit, mostly based on a precedent set by another pursuit gone bad in Georgia. In 2001, 19-year-old Victor Harris fled Coweta County troopers who caught him doing 73 in a 55-mph zone. His car was eventually rammed (not pitted), and, as a result of his injuries, Harris was left a quadriplegic. He sued and his case made it to the Supreme Court. In the end, eight out of nine justices found that Harris’ driving was so dangerous that he posed a threat great enough to justify deadly force. The 11th Circuit judge in the Sharp case came to the same conclusion, though the presence of passenger Garrett Gabe was not mentioned as a factor and his name did not make it into the decision, essentially allowing the court to sidestep the fact that a second, innocent, person was in the car.
In 2006, the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police commissioned a white paper on pursuits and pursuit policy in the state, with a heavy focus on use of the PIT maneuver. The committee in charge asked the faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology to study the technique’s safety. Four undergraduate engineering students executed the study, simulating a PIT maneuver in a computer engineering program, and determined that it was safe at both high and low speeds, in both wet and dry conditions. The simulation specified a car with a low center of gravity and wide tires. The study failed even to suggest anything that would happen on a real road with grass, bystanders, trees, and embankments, in any car but a simulated high-performance sports car that few people drive. Nevertheless, the Georgia committee relied on the students’ research in reaching its conclusion, writing, “It is the Committee’s opinion that the PIT maneuver is not deadly force because death or serious injury is not a likely consequence of using the PIT maneuver in accordance with proper training and policy.”
While the courts have said that using deadly force to stop a recklessly speeding fugitive is acceptable, Georgia’s police chiefs took a more radical position: that not withstanding the dozens of deaths it has caused, the PIT maneuver does not constitute deadly force at any speed.
A vehicle used for PIT maneuver training in Monroe County, Georgia.
Photo: Shaun Raviv
IN SEPTEMBER, the police department in LaGrange, Georgia, invited me to a PIT-training exercise at a closed-off roadway in Monroe County. About a dozen police officers attended that morning to perform the PIT maneuver on one another. After some practice, each would have to perform four out of five PITs correctly — matching the pursued vehicle’s speed, touching it a single time without ramming, making a quarter turn of the steering wheel, and pitting it to a stop in a designated area — in order to be allowed to perform the PIT in a real-life situation.
I rode in both the cars performing the PITs and the target vehicles, all of which were driven at about 30 mph, the preferred speed for training. By the time the training had been underway for an hour, screeches could be heard from all sides of the track and there was a strong smell of burnt rubber in the air. The cars used at the training center were old beaters, one step away from the dump, but fitted with metals bars on both sides and roll bars in case something went wrong. The side mirrors were missing or hanging on wire threads, the windows didn’t roll up or down, and the bodies were covered in dents, bruises, and scratches. Without the metal bars, one of the instructors said, they’d be destroyed in a day.
“If you can’t [pit] in training, I don’t have a lot of confidence that you can do it on the road,” Lt. Mark Kostial, one of four LaGrange PD PIT instructors, told me. “Remember, this is a thinking man’s game.” All involved wore helmets and heavy restraints.
As a passenger on both sides of the PIT, I found the force of the maneuver to be quite strong at 30 mph. It strained the neck to be in the pitted car, and was disconcerting to be spun off the roadway onto the grass. At 30 mph, the maneuver felt fairly controlled, and most, but not all, of the officers who trained that day passed. But they will rarely use the maneuver on the road. LaGrange’s police department, whose policy requires supervisory approval when a PIT is performed at more than 60 mph, has been training the PIT for about a dozen years, and the department has never had an injury that Chief Louis Dekmar can remember. Dekmar told me LaGrange will perform about two PITs in a typical year. Of course, LaGrange is a relatively small agency with only 80 or so people on the payroll.
One thing heavily emphasized by Lt. Kostial during the training was picking a location where a PIT maneuver may be safely performed. “If you’re going to spin someone out, it’s gotta be in the appropriate area. There’s a lot of responsibility in that,” Lt. Kostial told his trainees. Another instructor said, “There can be a speed that the PIT won’t work. The risks are too high. It’s not the be-all, end-all. … Just like we carry the belt and have a Taser and baton and gun, with the pursuit we have options.” LaGrange’s officers must be re-certified in the PIT every year.
A LaGrange, Georgia, police department training slide on the PIT maneuver.
Photo: LaGrange Georgia Police Department
WHEN I ASKED the Georgia State Patrol why there was no speed restriction in its PIT policy, Capt. Mark Perry replied that, “A vehicle pursuit is not a static event, it is very fluid, dynamic and rapidly evolving evolution.” The Georgia Department of Public Safety, he said, “doesn’t feel it is prudent to constrict a decision to one factor such as a minimum or maximum speed. It has to be a totality of the circumstances.”
I also spoke to officers from agencies with more restrictive PIT policies about their speed caps, and the consensus was that PIT maneuvers are unsafe at high speeds. “At really high speeds,” Trooper Dallas Greer of Kentucky State Police told me, “it’s not something you can use safely.” Major Russell Conte of New Hampshire State Police agreed. “It’s a dangerous maneuver any way you look at it,” he said. “It’s dangerous for the public, it’s dangerous for the perpetrators, it’s dangerous for the troopers.”
Officer David Northway of the Tallahassee Police Department, just across the border from Georgia, told me that his department trains its officers to use the PIT judiciously, with a cap of 45 mph. “We do not want it to be used on a day-to-day basis because of its inherent dangers to officers, to drivers, innocent bystanders, and the general public,” Northway said. “Above 45, the speed is too high so it is unsafe, and there is the possibility of collision.” He also said that his officers must have supervisory permission before any PIT. “It’s not something that you can just go ahead and do.” Northway could not recall any injuries from PITs in the past five years.
For an international perspective, I reached out to Peter Hosking, formerly the police inspector in charge of the reform program dealing with high-speed police pursuits in Queensland, Australia. After 29 years working for the Queensland Police Service, Hosking is now researching high-speed police pursuits and police use of force at Griffith University. “PIT maneuvers are not permitted in any Australian jurisdiction,” he wrote in an email. “In this country we are very risk averse. We tend to see PIT maneuvers as very risky behavior. In effect, it is a form of dangerous driving, the very behavior we are trying to eliminate through enforcement.”
Geoffrey Alpert, the criminology professor at USC, can be found quoted in just about any academic or journalistic article written on pursuits. Alpert told me that nobody knows how many agencies use the PIT. He said that above 35 mph, the PIT “becomes a deadly force technique.” When I asked why some agencies don’t have a cap, he said, “They’re not familiar with the risks and the liabilities.”
“Like any other piece of equipment, any other new technology,” Alpert told me, “when it’s used properly, it’s a very good technique. It’s just you gotta understand its limitations.”
In 2008, Ford Motor Company commissioned a paper on the PIT maneuver by three engineers, two from the University of Michigan and one from Ford. The authors created simulations in order to “provide guidelines for the effective execution of the maneuver.” Their intent was not to determine safety protocols for law enforcement agencies, but among their conclusions, the authors wrote, “PIT involves high risks, especially at elevated speed. The authors do not endorse the use of PIT maneuver at high-speed situations.”
“At higher speeds, the combined effects of spinning and skidding after the maneuver is more pronounced,” the authors wrote. “Although it destabilizes the pursued vehicle to a larger extent, it is more likely to induce unintended injuries since the pursued vehicle skids more at higher speeds. Because the ultimate purpose of PIT maneuver is to prevent the pursued from proceeding forward, instead of throwing it into complete instability, the execution of PIT maneuvers should be limited to relatively low speeds.”
“ICAN’T HELP BUT FEEL like the GSP officer who executed the PIT maneuver should be on trial with him,” wrote Patti Shore, Marion’s mother, when Thanquarius Calhoun was arrested in 2014. “His whole way of thinking was, it wasn’t his fault,” Shore said of Calhoun. “He didn’t do it. The Georgia State Patrol officer did it. And this is where I agree.”
Marion Shore
Photo: Courtesy of Shore family
I asked Shore why she felt the need to send Calhoun this message, and she said, “Because I felt like that was something my daughter would have wanted. She wouldn’t have wanted me to hate him, and in order for me to progress and get past this, I had to forgive him. But I haven’t forgiven that Georgia State Patrol officer. I can’t.”
One witness in the Sharp trial referred to an agency’s chosen pursuit policy as “a philosophical decision.” The decision to perform a PIT maneuver at high speeds can thus be seen as a choice to protect hypothetical people, victims who may or may not exist farther down the road. Patti Shore put it best when telling me about the district attorney who prosecuted Calhoun, but failed to place any blame on the officer who performed the PIT or the agency that allowed him to do so: “He made it all about the people that could have lost their lives,” she said. “Not the one that did.”
A clearer, more restrictive policy might help the Georgia State Patrol save more real lives rather than hypothetical ones. It might bring the numbers closer to those in California, where the PIT is practiced more safely. Georgia State Patrol officers wouldn’t have to “just go on their own feelings,” as Patti Shore put it. At the very least, the agency should be dissatisfied with a policy that depends on almost no science and very little data, except the numbers that show the Georgia State Patrol kills many more people with the PIT maneuver than other agencies do.
Causation was often discussed in the Sharp and Calhoun cases. What caused the cars to leave the road? What caused the young adults to run from the police? In the closing argument for Calhoun’s prosecution, Assistant District Attorney Brian Atkinson said, “If Thanquarius Calhoun had not committed that felonious act, Marion Shore would be alive today; therefore, Thanquarius Calhoun caused her death. Causation is as simple as that.”
Calhoun’s lawyer retorted, in his closing argument, that Marion Shore “is part of the public that this law enforcement was supposed to protect and serve. They did not do that. Was there another option other than that PIT maneuver? I don’t know. I don’t know if there was another option. Maybe. Maybe law enforcement should have backed off and just let that vehicle go. At some point they may have slowed down. But we know one thing, Marion Shore is dead because of Trooper Saddler.”
When I spoke to Calhoun’s mother, Rosie, in her home in McDonough, she offered an alternative solution, one that was pure fantasy but pointed toward a gentler idea of law enforcement more in line with that of policy expert Geoffrey Alpert, who believes pursuits should not occur unless a violent crime has been committed; the dangers do not outweigh the benefits. Rosie said she wished the police could have just put her in front of her son as he sped down the road, to show him that she was there waiting on the other end. Instead of police barricades and flashing lights, he would have seen Rosie, his mama. “And knowing my child,” she told me, “he would have slowed down.”
In a letter sent from Autry State Prison, Calhoun, who is now 24, told me that when he was fleeing from the cops that day, he was doing everything he could to avoid crashing: “In my eyes, I was driving good and trying not to wreck. Just trying to get us back home safe and not go to jail.” He doesn’t think the police should be able to perform a PIT at such high speeds for a speeding violation. “It’s too dangerous even for the officer,” he wrote. “They can get hurt behind it as well.”
In his letter, Calhoun said he hasn’t been the same mentally or physically since the PIT maneuver. He’s off balance when he walks, his reflexes are slower, and he dreams about Marion and the chase. He regrets running from the cops that day and regrets putting innocent people, including the police, in harm’s way. He regrets making that decision because now he’s away from his little girl, his mother, and everyone he loves, including his friend Marion Shore. He wishes he could go back and pull over that afternoon, but he doesn’t believe he deserves a life sentence for her death — the same sentence a serial murderer might receive in many states — or that he was the only one at fault. “I almost died the day of that crash, and then they gone try to take my life away again,” he wrote. “How much more they gone keep hurting me.”
This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with support from the Puffin Foundation.
It is embarrassing that you feel the need to throw around buzz words like “anti-terrorism” in order to generate interest in your article. It is a shame because I think the article has many good points, but you feel the need to detract from the core rational section by making emotional appeals. You should have focused on the differences in how different states use the PIT maneuver, rather than trying to stir people by discussing the gory details of the crash.
People who like rational arguments such as myself are discouraged by emotional appears in most political persuasive pieces. It makes it even worse that I feel no sympathy for the boy who caused the accident. He endangered the lives of innocent people with his reckless driving on several occasions before finally causing the death of his friend.
Maybe if you don’t do something to get followed by the police you dont get killed.
The brake pedal is only a few inches away. It’s as simple as that. Don’t break the law and there won’t be consequences to your actions.
What the heck is going on with this site? Articles like these are getting dangerously close to getting the intercept removed from my favorites bar. Police aren’t blood thirsty PIT obsessed thugs, they try to make the best decisions they can under pressure, which is always a difficult problem when you have people who are willing to endanger the lives of others in order to escape the consequences of their own stupidity. The officers in these stories didn’t want to kill the people in the cars, and it’s quite possible the pit maneuver could’ve gone wrong and they had died themselves. Is it unfortunate? Of course. But this article is literally twisting facts to find a story. I liked this website because it was an advocate against an expanding surveillance state, which I thought was over stepping its bounds. This website should focus on building its advocacy arm with GOOD stories to back up its case. This is just sounds like a guy with an axe to grind with the cops. Not a winner.
What the article is saying brother is that the maneuver is excessive and dangerous and you are potentially delivering the death penalty at high speeds for traffic violations when you could simply radio ahead and have the fuzz waiting in the drive way for them.
So why don’t YOU tell us what the best thing to do is? Should the cops just back off and let them run? Should they keep up pursuit at 100+mph? Waiting in the drive-way? C’mon. Don’t be silly. You know damn good and well that if someone ran from the police, headed towards home and saw a cop in the driveway, they would just keep going. The PIT maneuver is absolutely necessary. Don’t be a dumbass and you won’t run the risk of a PIT and death. Simple as that.
Yes, they should back on and let them run. Many jurisdictions are finding this is working out much better and resulting in arrests under more controlled circumstances. In this country, at this time, we do not administer the death penalty for being either a dumbass or an innocent person in the wrong car at the wrong time.
Yes, let them run. You’re missing the point of crashing a car full of kids or innocents for minor violations. Like choking some dude to death for selling cigarettes; it’s excessive. Like Dcent says, being a dumbass does not get you the death penalty.
What you are observing is the Intercept’s version of yellow journalism. It seems apparent that a story isn’t really up to snuff unless you can tie it to terrorism or make it be against police if at all possible or against the government. Ironically, there is plenty going on to give good reason to be wary of government and police. Yet, there seems to be an editorial litmus test in a lot of the junior writing where they just go as far as they can in one direction with no sense of balance whatsoever. You just have to skim through all of that crap and harvest the facts and kind of rewrite in your head, discarding all of the fluff…and many of the stories unfortunately contain enough to start a pillow factory. This story was far too long, but it is on target that SOME police are using this technique dangerously and for no good reason and it is getting innocent people killed.
Funny that Masha Gessen’s article of Putin’s censorship is applying the same treatment to comments on it’s own article! I posted a comment but it’s yet to appear there.
Posting here for “-Mona-” and Greenwald to see and enjoy the irony.
You probably drooled on the keyboard again, blowhard.
Problem, reaction, solution = Chronic Traffic violators, alarm over lawlessness and safety concerns, draconian measures (pit Maneuvers)
Problem, reaction, solution = Injury and death due to pit maneuvers by police, citizen outrage, remote ignition kill switch or magnetic pulse guns
Calculated evolution of state solutions = Net loss of liberty
3 words DE-ESCA-LATION
The police deserve to be considered thugs of the government.
The average IQ in Georgia must be about 60. In Germany we do not even give chase, we just send ticket in the mail. Americans are such dramma queens.
quote”The average IQ in Georgia must be about 60″unquote
You are far too generous. Divide by 3.
quote”Americans are such dramma queens.”unquote
Hahahaha. I’ll file that under Great Moments in DOH!
pretty simple – DON’T run from the police ! I don’t feel sorry for the inmate Calhoun that is “hurt” – he started it (multiple times), the police finished it. Doesn’t matter his “color” – what matters is that he took others lives into HIS hands fleeing from the police.
grow up people – a “criminals health” is much less important than the public’s health – end of story
absolutely correct obeisance, citizen ! ! !
avert your gaze !
do what you are told !
don’t talk back !
Big Daddy will make everything ok, do whatever Big Daddy says ! ! !
“Anti-terrorist tactic” — spare us the word “terrorist”. I doubt this was an “anti-terrorist tactic” when it was first taught, because police weren’t obsessed with terrorism then. Violent armed gangsters perhaps — terrorists, doubtful.
Not everything in this world revolves around terrorism, despite what Fox might tell you. Find the correct word.
Otherwise a well-written article.
heart wrenching storty. i hope he gets use to his predicament.
It’s a bit misleading to call this an antiterrorism tactic. Police have been using it for years. That doesn’t mean it’s a smart thing to do, but they have been doing it since long before we started calling everything terrorism.
It’s a precision manoevre, and often goes wrong, just like car chases often go wrong. I remember years ago, there was a big debate over whether police should give chase in squadcars, as that motivates the fleeing suspect to drive dangerously, often causing death and destruction. This is essentially the same problem. The pursuing officer has to make a quick judgement call about the risk to public safety of allowing the suspect to flee, versus the risks of a high-speed pursuit, or in this case, the risks of using the PIT. It’s easy to get this judgement wrong, either way, and if tragedy happens, the officer will get blamed either way, for action or inaction. It’s a lousy position to be in.
Never, ever, get into a car with a person named “Thanquarius.”
So, one more time:
The biggest threat to the governed is the government.
So, one more time:
The biggest threat to critical thinking is you.
Drop the facade, just shoot to kill for any infraction – It was also in Georgia where Boo Boo Phonesavah was guilty of sleeping in his crib when the police state threw their flash bang into the crib and claimed it was his fault for being in the way.
Don’t even bother to give chase. Just send a predator drone to kill the offender along with anyone else unlucky enough to be collateral damage.
How long before they carpet bomb neighborhoods over drug deals or traffic tickets?
The warrior class is above reproach when dealing with slaves in the American police state. Am I too subtle? Wake up and smell the coffee.
“carpet bomb” neighborhoods ? LOL – I am certain there are quite a few streets in Chicago and Los Angeles where “carpet bombing” would certainly do wonders for the area !
and you just proved his point
A couple of points. First, since when is running from cops or highway patrol a capital offense? Worthy of the death penalty? That is the way this is treated, under the false theory that every non stopper is really a dangerous felon for whom no risk is too large to try and apprehend. Where are the death penalty foes when these dangerous police tactics are used with deadly effect?
Like pulling out a cell phone from your pocket, non stoppage in a police matter becomes a foolproof cop excuse to kill you without consequences.
Second, what would happen if some citizen pulled a PIT at the rear of a police vehicle. My certain bet is that you would be charged with attempted murder or assault with a deadly weapon. And if a police fatality happened (what? isn’t high speed PIT very safe?) then you would be charged with capital murder, in many places a death penalty charge.
So how could they claim it’s perfectly safe when the Georgia Highway Patrol does it at 107 mph but a capital offense if Jim Bob does it to a GHP vehicle?
Unless the credible context of a police action justifies deadly force (fleeing armed robber, kidnapper, murderer, rapist, etc.) why are the police ever justified in killing someone who (foolishly) chooses not to stop? Where is the statute saying that fleeing police is a justifiable basis for killing a civilian? This same problem arises in crowded city traffic when cops blow through stop lights and signs in a pursuit. Where I live they are never even tried for manslaughter when their dangerous behavior results in innocent deaths or injuries.
And yet Law Enforcement whines about why everyone doesn’t love and respect them…
“A couple of points. First, since when is running from cops or highway patrol a capital offense? Worthy of the death penalty? ”
Since the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that Licoln was such a supporter of.
https://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/fugative_slave_act_1850pdf/file/752647
Another argument for getting rid of the cars. They are simply murder machines, not much use to anyone except the manufacturers.
Why does a Toyota Corolla have to be able to run @ 120mph, anyway? (A: as a selling point.)
Another argument for getting rid of cars. They aren’t that much use to the Elite or aspiring fascists, only regular Americans.
Why would anyone what to empower ordinary Americans, anyways? (A: because people should have the right to make the choices they like, while not infringing on the rights of others)
The IDF and Israeli tech companies have already developed technology that could be placed into every car allowing them to be taken over remotely. The major obstacle is that we have this pesky thing called civil rights in America. So these companies and people give money to foundations like the Nation Institue and they give money to subversive authors, to make it seem like there is this big scary problem. Conviently the solution appears in draconian technology.
The technology is a simple letter sent to the owner of the car and boot on the wheel of the car once it is found at a complete stop if the fine is not payed.
Seriously? 90% of the time the crook is driving a stolen car.
Commenters wonder why people run from the cops. Of course it is a bad decision, but often it is not a conscious decision, but rather, an automatic reaction to a serious threat.
In other words, our instinct for survival, sensing the threat, triggers the Fight or Flight response – no thinking required. And when all one has to do to flee is push harder on the accelerator, flight appears to be the easier path, because no one thinks fighting the cops is a survivable tactic.
The ever popular Dukes of Hazard would die in their first show. Things were not always this way, nor is this better.
The cops live by a very simple code: Obey or De. It is as simple as that.
If a cop gives you an order and you hesitate or say “No”, you will suffer, and rightly so. Failure to Obey is the supreme crime, because it is a direct challenge to the state’s authority and monopoly on violence.
No one should be surprised by Calhoun’s conviction. After all, this a story of the Georgia Slave Patrol being sent to deal with a suspected “uppity nigger” or escaped slave, either one gets the same treatment. Certainly everyone can understand that the Slave Patrol can not return empty-handed. Even one successful escape or unpunished disrespect could encourage the rest of the slaves to do likewise. Obviously that can not be allowed.
Certainly conditions are better for white trash like myself, but only by degrees. Cops routinely kill people even in sparsely populated regions of the whitest state in the nation. My next-door neighbor’s brother was killed by the cops, in his own house, in front of his elderly mother. Apparently family drama and mental illness was involved, as usual. So the response was to send a death squad.
All the discussion of PIT regulations and reform is useless and a distraction. The police are institutions of state violence and social control that must be dismantled and replaced. One can not make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.
Moral of the story, if you bahave like a jackass you could get yourself or your friends killed and end up in prison. Moral of the article, the Puffin foundation and the Nation foundation are willing to throw police officers under the bus to promote stories by their buddies with New York connections.
“one of whom was utterly innocent. The other was guilty of speeding.”
Actually, the driver was guilty of (as per the article)
* Speeding
* Driving on a suspended license
* Fleeing from police
* Dangerous driving
* (possible) theft of the vehicle, which she took without permission
Should she have died for it, no. However, keep in mind that a driver who is speeding an weaving is also a danger to anyone else on the road, which is often the mindset under which they are engaged by police. Perhaps if she had continued we could have instead read an article about how police failed to stop her which she took out a minivan with a mom and kids.
Yeah, it’s dumb to run from the cops. But it’s also dumb for cops to think they have to chase speeders as if they’re murderers. With all the technology available to the police, they can’t scan the license plate and get the driver later?
By your retarded logic, police should no longer engage is high speed chases even if the driver is fleeing at 120mph after being pulled over. Instead they should let criminals hide there their drugs, guns, kidnap victims, ect. before going to their house to arrest them at convenient time . And if the car is stolen? Who cares the government should just hack everyone’s phone and turn on the mic to record everything and lie to the public about it, so criminals can’t adapt. Then we could all feel safe and fuzzy inside. Or we could just let good police continue to do their jobs.
I’m always amazed at all the high speed chases that could be avoided by just getting the license no. and letting it go. Then go to where the vehicle is addressed and pick the driver up. The only reason I could see for a chase is if a violent act has just been committed and others could be harmed if left alone. What really transpires is a thrilling hunt and hunted scenario, because after all, we’re just animals at heart. If cooler heads prevail almost all of these types of chases could end peacefully without lives lost or destruction of property. Our police officers live in a culture of violence and expect violent outcomes. If instead, a sense of calm and quiet determination can end without a violent outcome type of policy, should be in place.
Pit stop the sh** out of the motherfu*****s. It’s like they’re waving and shooting off a loaded gun that could anyone at anytime. They’re disregard is their problem and if they die it’s their fault.
Running from the police is like drinking and driving. You deserve whatever happens to you. As soon as you decide to drive off in either circumstance, you’re putting innocent people at risk.
The police in my area are told not to pursue at high speeds–and they don’t. That didn’t stop a car with 3 teenagers from fleeing at high speeds anyways and killing 2 others (the pursuit stopped 20kms earlier but the teenagers continued nevertheless). In this case a successful PIT might have saved 2 lives. OR it could have killed everyone in the car… The point is that the tragedy starts with the fleeing suspect, NOT the officer. Suggesting the officer should be tried for actions aimed towards ending a pursuit is extremely ignorant.
“Suggesting the officer should be tried for actions aimed towards ending a pursuit is extremely ignorant.”
Every American, whether that person be a police officer or not, is liable for their actions. Just because the offender started this tragedy does not mean the officer can end it by any means necessary. In this case, the officer did not appear to break any laws or policies but if this happened in another state, that may not have been the case.
Watering down The Intercept’s vital, populist voice with this sort of feel-good, pro-idiot article is not just a shame, it’s tragic.
Extreme speeders kill. The PIT manuver may or may not be safer than following behind for an indefinite period, and may or may not be safer than using spike strips, but none of this has anything to do with the oppression suffered at the hands of the One Percent.
Let’s not water down the important work done at this site with distracting bilge such as this.
After years of GG ranting that terrorism is a meaningless word, The Intercept proves the point by using it to create a click bait headline.
And, no, people fleeing the police at 100+ MPH are not innocent victims. They are criminals showing a wanton disregard for the lives of others.
As was pointed out, passengers have been killed by poor decisions to use this technique. Barring an absolute imminent devastating threat to public safety, officers should not use lethal force.
The Intercept should fire Shaun Raviv for writing wolf, when describing the good shepherd. The police aren’t always wrong Mr. Raviv!
“The police aren’t always wrong Mr. Raviv!”
Bill, you are so right. But what do you believe should happen when they are?
Deceptive title, way to long, and morally off point. This officer risked his life pulling this effective maneuver, against a repeat criminal who endangering the life’s of everyone on the road. If I could I would personally send this officer a medal for his courageous actions. I will also never read anyone of Mr. Raviv’s articles again.
You are basically saying that a police officer in pursuit of a traffic violator should be allowed to shoot and kill the passengers in the car if that is what it takes to get the driver. Using this maneuver at high speed is basically applying lethal force and is just as deadly as opening fire, but far less accurate. Police should never use this technique at these speeds unless they intend to kill and don’t care who else dies.
The mere risking of life does not justify one’s actions. That said, I support your right to ignore any information that is upsetting to you because it challenges your beliefs about life. I imagine the list of authors you will never read again is getting quite long.
So it seems Dcent & Bodhi need to come up with this new effective way to stop a speeding car on a highway entering a populated area. Clearly you two must have some method of ending these chases without further endangering the PUBLIC. Public come first, officer second and the offender third. Also know that you both have been lied to by the author as the PIT maneuver is BANNED for use in most local law enforcement in this country. While state troopers are technically allowed to use it they are only authorized to do so when there is imminent danger to the public.
HOWEVER, you all have really missed the point 100%, not your fault as the author forgot a very serious change to highway policing that took place over 15 years ago. Police chases for small traffic offenses do not exist, it has been policy for the past 20 years for most states and 15 for the rest that unless there is imminent danger to the public then an officer is to let a car go and use dash cam footage to track down the car and follow up. That’s the way the world works, While it would be better for Mr Raviv’s story if things were a bit more like his fictional wild west, it just isn’t reality.
Also, if the PIT maneuver is a “military anti-terrorist” maneuver, then the Internet is a military communication tool.
Mr. Raviv, your not reaching or being current or topical, your openly lying to your readers and I find it interesting no one at the Intercept seems to care.
Sadly, the most important part of your comment is not true. Police do in fact initiate and sustain dangerous chases for offenses which do not qualify under the standard you think exists. Many have died, many have been maimed. Further, the best way to stop a speeding car from entering a populated area is to stop chasing it. It will slow down. As I have said, unless there is a VERY good emergency reason to pursue, police should use other means to meet up with that car/driver under more favorable circumstances.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I can’t get angry at at the police in this case. The fault is entirely with the driver that ran.
If these pigs do not have all the fixings of the “hunt” my god what would they do with their lives? Help people? The racist pigs need to do some slave hunting, they love the rush, they love the control, the repressed sexual sublimation…it will never go away until they deal with their manhood and the fact they hate minorities and poor people.
The sad part is that I don’t think your a troll.
Who would believe that underline racezsem is still so deep rooting in our collective DNA
Skip Georgia in your next trip
Please learn to spell next time.
We have a serious law enforcement problem in America. Too many violent cops running around with no oversight. Laws designed to fleece citizens. It’s a bad situation.
Waaaay too long! Aren’t their any editors around? Basic summary for all the above is this: Some US police jurisdictions are using a traffic maneuver against fleeing drivers at speeds likely to result in fatal outcomes.
There, not there. Too sleepy
Our filthy police at work. What could be more heinous?
You, calling 911 for help as a victim.
Madeleine Albright recently raised the subject of hell, who might be going there, and why. From what I’ve just read, the pit of Georgia will contribute a fair number – to choose misery for others is to damn oneself.
Car manufacturers should fix a mechanism that can be remotely operated by law enforcement to bring any moving vehicle to a halt. Then all these dangerous techniques don’t have to be applied.
The dumbest thing you can do is run from the cops. The first story that knucklehead had ran from the cops and been in high speed chases 3 times prior and the second story the girl ran from the cops for 75 miles(almost an hour at 100mph!) Both of theses are extreme cases of people that needed to be stopped at all costs. How many times did people like this kill innocent bystanders or other drivers during the same time period? Why didn’t you find the families of the innocent people killed by high speed chases that were minding there own business driving the speed limit? Being a passenger in a car that is running from the cops doesn’t make you innocent! If they did a drive by shooting they would all be up on murder, not just the driver. Parents stop being ignorant and teach your kids that hanging with bad people means bad things will happen to you! America, it’s always the cops fault.
There are spike strips, road blocks, and many other solutions to the problem. Rather than chase at high speeds, back off and radio ahead. If the driver being chased is not pushed into higher speeds by a cop on their ass, they will likely slow down to a more reasonable speed, thus not endangering lives of bystanders as much.
What an incredibly stupid statement. If you had actually read the article, you would know that in Georgia police officers are free to choose to use a technique in such a way as to assure that they will kill people, people that need not be killed.
The dumbest thing you can do is to chase a driver fleeing a traffic stop. Cars everntiually run out of gas or return to a known location. Chasing merely causes the fleeing driver to speed up and drive more frantically.
But, the police love the chase, the “Road Warrior” mentality, ther adrenaline rush and the dangerous “Dukes of Hazard” maneuvers they then jsutify to themselves they were required to perform.
After watching that video it is my opinion the “pitting” cop is guilty of, at least, vehicular manslaughter. The maneuver, for one, did not look at all like the description of a PIT maneuver. It looked more like the cop misjudged, swiped the rear bumper, hooked it and sent the car into an uncontrollable spin.
Also, the location of the manuever, in a narrow corridor lined with trees, near a guardrail and an overpass, and 3 or more tractor-trailes comeing up from behind, was inappropriate. There was not enough open space for the car to ever come to a halt safely off the road. I’m surprised these points were not brought up a trial.
Further, the young driver was not driving erratically and seem to have control of his vehicle up to the point he was struck sideways from behind with such force the bumper was ripped off the car. Notice how he stayed to the left and pased the slower police cruiser in the left lane with sufficient room. The road was fairly clear, except for the cops and a few tractor-trailers, which a Toyota, even driven over 100mph, is not going to effect very much.
There seemed to be no need at that time of the collision to do anything but follow and perhaps block the road futher along with 2 or more slower moving police cars forcing the fleeing driver to slow down. But our demolition derby police officer just had to play hero and the result was the death of an innocent passenger.
The Intercept is yellowing itself by referring to this as an “Anti-terrorism” tactic. When BSR (which incidentally stands for Bill Scott Racing, after the founder, who owned Summit Point Raceway) started teaching these kinds of techniques, back in the late 1970s, it was for the purpose of training escorts of VIPs to defeat or evade ambushes, and to teach law enforcement how to safely conduct pursuits, and perform exactly the kinds of things reported on here. So it has nothing to do with terrorism.
Others have commented on the existence of other, less dangerous methods of dealing with speeders and reckless drivers, and while I agree, it is worth pointing out that having a license plate number is not sufficient to prove in court that a particular individual, even the vehicle’s owner, was driving. This gives some justification to active measures such as the PIT technique.
I agree with 24b4Jeff , the “anti-terrorism tactic” is not really justified.
The desire to catch a criminal doesn’t justify killing people. Police are supposed to be part of the solution, not part of the problem! And when they first accelerate to high speeds, then knock someone off the road to near-certain demise in order to prevent the danger the high speeds caused, that’s a problem.
The most effective weapon against crime a police officer carries is his RADIO. Police are supposed to exemplify the overall cooperation of the lawful elements of society, and using communication to work as a team is a way they can capitalize on this strength.
I see a lot of – It’s bad and they shouldn’t do it unless it’s real slow, but no alternative or solution. If you’re not a criminal pull over. Everyone knows cops have faster cars, radios and helicopters. What moron does this for a speeding ticket? Bad things happen to good people that hangout with bad people. Sad story, but what’s the solution?
In Canada we have strict restrictions on high speed chases, period, much to the consternation of the police, mind you. And anarchy has not been the result. These PIT maneuvers are more about an affront to police authority than danger to the public. The bigger picture here is that the police are quite willing to kill people, guilty or innocent, as retribution for disrespect of their authority. Anyone that thinks that an overstatement need only the video of the beating of Rodney King or the videos of persons being shot in the back for running away, some apparently for no other reason than fear. Civilian oversight is a big part of the answer. ….But that’s a struggle.
You hit the nail on the head. With so many of today’s cops, it is all about compliance.
Simple advice for COPS: Do not engage in a high speed chase. You have their license number and no where to find them. You can track them. Back off and let them go. You can arrest them later.
Nice piece, Shaun. I could tell you put a substantial amount of time into it but after I got done reading, I wondered to myself… good luck fixing that.
Doesn’t seem like something the feds would regulate and Bo and Luke Duke in the Georgia House prolly have no problem killing off a few of the low income types.
What would be the penalty if Bo Duke there were riding down the road at that crazy speed *without* cops chasing him, and simply hit a patch of black ice or something leading to a passenger’s death? It seems to me that, as a first step toward justice, his sentence should be the same as those, because the PIT maneuver was not something he was expecting – it was, from his point of view, an accident.
Calling what the officer did in the video a PIT is like calling grabbing someone by the throat and balls and throwing them down a flight of stairs a controlled takedown. What he did was always called ramming, and outlawed because of the high number of deaths it caused. The very first step of an attempt at a PIT is the communication among the three drivers as to who is going to perform each role (lead/contact, flanker, box) because it is a formation action that is over in seconds, and if there is no opportunity during the act to see which role the other driver is attempting and choose another. If there is no record of that communication on the radio tapes, it should be an automatic finding of reckless endangerment by the officer.
The PIT technique sounds primitive. Having surveillance drones armed with missiles would allow the police to stop fleeing suspects, or any suspects really, without endangering their own lives.
My understanding is that the DHS has an unlimited budget for outfitting police departments with this kind of gear.
The article is correct, however, that any techniques developed against terrorists are eventually deployed against the general citizenry. It’s just another trickle down benefit of the War on Terror.
Indeed. But you leave out the best part: if the fleeing suspect survives by running into a church or a department store or something, and the drone blows the building up with its missiles, you can charge him with dozens of counts of murder. Closing all those murder counts so quickly and easily really does wonders for a prosecutor’s crime statistics!
My understanding is that the DHS has an unlimited budget for outfitting police departments with this kind of gear.
Your assertion is wrong, but the notion that this can be fixed with “surveillance drones armed with missiles” is just hilarious. also please be aware that you are writing on a device connected to a system developed by the department of defense for communication. long before the “war on terror”. Literally the only part of your comment that makes sense is the timestamp.
Run from the cops instead of signing a $120 ticket
Then. Whine when your passenger gets killed
Guarantee they voted for a democrat