People just don’t think some of the time, at the time of course the 1st bike we ever had stolen was hands down the biggest junker that only needed to get us the short distance to school and back, found it in the trailer park across from the school where one of the kids was riding it. Kind of hard to miss a bike with a blue rear tire.
A few years ago a young man living in a rural area near me had souped up a car and added NOx to it and was out road testing it. An off duty HP driving his patrol car saw the hot rod and persuid the car but lost control, left the road and died. The wannabe Duke boy was easily found and arrested, tried and found guilty of ‘depraved heart murder’ and will spend many years in prison. Since that happened there have been 2 instances where drivers have failed to stop behind school buses and killed young children yet never were charged. The injustice and poor judgement of law enforcement in my area is totally outrageous. Apparently shortcomings here are somewhat common nation wide.
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So how do folks feel about “Street Outlaws” on the Discovery Channel?
“Street Outlaws explores the world of illegal street racing in Oklahoma City, which boasts having “America’s fastest street cars.” These unruly racers endanger their lives, spend a small fortune and risk going to jail, all to move up their top ten list.”
I find the whole idea of a show glorifying this stuff crazy stupid/disgusting. Of course it’s all fake, but to have this show glorifying a trend that’s killing innocent bystanders on a weekly basis is NUTS.
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Yes, absolutely!
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Totally. A friend at work lives in Southern Maryland and he said that he can hear late night drag races in a stretch of road near him. There is even a drag strip near them. Surely they could go bracket racing at the strip rather than take the chance of hurting or killing someone. I read in the newspaper about at least one accident during a race there.
My privacy arguments would stem more toward, even places that are supposed to be secure get hacked. Like banks, and the Pentagon. Sure, if I just robbed a gas station at gunpoint, disable my car. But I’d rather not put that capability in the hands of criminals.
You just know that if the system used to disable cars were ever cracked, even if no one tried to steal cars with it, someone would be shutting cars down at random because they thought it funny.
Same. Makes you wonder how well a reality show about robbing banks would do. Maybe I should produce one. 
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Yes a system that probably will be hacked is a concern. At least in driving in bad heighborhoods in Chicago in my bosses Caddilac, leave a car length between you and the next car in front so you could run away in case of a car jacking, or box and rob.
Too late. “How to Rob a Bank” is in reruns on Vice. The criminals were all caught and everything is recreated, but the criminals and their crimes are real.
This also brings up one of the bad things about unions. A strong union can force the employer to put off discipline for an employee that does something wrong. That was certainly the case when I worked in the steel mill. Drinking on the job was tolerated because the union would not allow discipline for the drunk. This was extremely dangerous to the drunk and his fellow employees. If he was too drunk, they just put him on a bench to sleep it off. There are good things about unions, too. Any organization has both good and bad things about it. Since we are discussing a negative aspect of policing, I thought this was appropriate.
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John the cop gets license plate number and arrests person later? Really. So, stoplight cameras are still illegal? Take a pic of license but courts rule you can’t ticket the driver. No proof they were driving. And your uncle john has proof now when he arrests driver at later time?
Going back to the original posting title, I disagree. 2 people are dead, not because of cowboy pursuit mentality, but because a criminal decided to steal and endanger the lives of innocent bystanders.
The fault here lies squarely on the shoulders of the one stealing the car. The only problem with that is the criminal doesn’t care, just the rest of us do.
I believe I’ve seen video of a late model GM vehicle with Onstar that was disabled during a pursuit.
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I see these problems all the time, as I’m a public sector employee and pretty much all of my colleagues are dues-paying union members
They constantly save workers who SHOULD be fired
Neglicence
100% incompetence
willful disobedience
theft
walking right up to a supervisor’s face and telling them what they can do to themselves
and so on . . .
I work with a guy right now who couldn’t diagnose a flat tire, let alone a check engine light
He’s a UTI “graduate” . . . which pretty much says it all, in my opinion . . . who means well and is a nice guy, but he’s absolutely unwilling and/or unable to learn. The rest of us are trying to help him figure out how automotive stuff works, but he won’t take advice. He does everything his way, and it’s always the wrong way.
It gets even worse . . . he didn’t legitimately pass the written entrance exam to get the job. Somebody gave him the questions and answers ahead of time.
He literally shouldn’t be working with us. He didn’t earn it.
It’s kind of ridiculous when a bunch of guys are all getting paid the same, but one of them isn’t carrying his weight, and the others have to make up for it 
Sorry I got sidetracked
But my story was kind of about unions . . .
They save guys that should fall to the wayside, so to speak
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In Maryland, the owner of the car is assessed a fine for running a red light, but there are no points given since the authorities can’t determine who was driving. In most cases, a car might be driven by the owner, their spouse, or children. Look at it as a household fine. Certainly the family knows who did it based on when the incident occurred. If the car was stolen, the owner could probably prove that, but would have to go to court to do so.
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Owners should be responsible for the misuse of their vehicles.
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There’s almost never such a thing as a single point of failure in any mishap. In this case, yes, the criminal chose to steal and chose to run from cops. But the cops also chose to continue pursuing him instead of backing off. Had they chosen not to continue pursuing him, those 2 people would probably be alive today, so their deaths are, in part, a result of police actions.
The argument that “the suspect chose what would happen” is a common one and attempts to cast police as hapless victims of circumstance who are not responsible for de-escalating a situation in the interest of public safety. I find that attitude to be wrong-headed and, frankly, abhorrent.
The police have a responsibility to at least make an attempt to keep innocent members of the public reasonably safe. Yes, sometimes that will mean that they have to choose to allow a non-violent criminal to escape when the criminal chooses to commit a crime and then chooses not to sit still while cops close in. The alternative is choosing to put citizens at risk of injury and death, and that should not be acceptable unless they reasonably believe that allowing the criminal to escape will put citizens at an equal or greater risk of injury and death.
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I’ve read of reports where police stopped the chase, and the car ended up wrecking anyway.
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I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw a pickup truck barreling down on me at a high speed on a city street. About the same time I heard a siren. A police car was in pursuit of the pickup truck. I quickly maneuvered to the side of the street. I read later where the pickup driver had stolen $10 worth of merchandise from Walmart.
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…whose actions were necessitated by the thief in the first place. And in circles we go. Bottom line, if person A had not stolen a car, none of the subsequent actions would have happened.
I’m very happy that the police have the training they do in order to de-escalate a situation. Can you imagine the carnage that would follow if people were left to their own devices to manage a situation like that? I mean if I caught someone stealing my car, the response is likely to come from the working end of a firearm. And that’s a shame, because there’s nothing in my garage worth losing your life over.
There’s an intangible, unquantifiable part to that argument. Once I was picking up some auto parts from a local chain store. While I was talking to the manager, a couple of young men walked back to the stereo section, picked up a box of car speakers, and headed for the door. Manager calmly said “Put it back guys.” He said that happens a couple of times a month. How much do you let people get away with? Should he have called the cops? Restrained them? Thrown a wrench at their heads?
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There are good and bad things about unions, mine just rebuilt the local after getting rid of a president who tried to force a merger with another local just to stay employed. The Union really had my co-workers back when our employer went into bankruptcy protection. We had legal representation provided that made sure we had a voice and a seat at the table.
Almost 21yrs as a member of UFCW Local 367
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No they weren’t. It was necessary to make an attempt to bring the criminal to justice with the least possible danger to innocent life and property. It was not necessary to re-enact Starsky & Hutch. Bottom line, if the cops had not been brought up in the mentality that everyone must submit to their authority immediately or they must use every possible measure to force them to submit immediately, then they wouldn’t have chased that idiot kid, and wouldn’t have put everyone in the area in literal mortal danger over a property crime. And that decision was made long before the thief decided to steal the car.
That’s the problem. A lot of them don’t. A lot of them have specific training to escalate situations. Hell, they’ve escalated situations with me, in my former life in television. I’d be on the other side of the street standing next to my marked news vehicle, wearing station-logo clothing and pointing a large, very obviously professional camera at them, and they’d stop their investigation to walk across the street and threaten to put me in jail if I didn’t “stop interfering.” That’s not de-escalation. And if they did that to me when they knew they were being recorded and knew that as press I enjoyed very specific constitutional protections for what I was doing, and tried to trample my rights anyway, imagine what they did to the teenager they pulled over in the middle of the night with no witnesses to their behavior.
De-escalation my foot.
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