[stefan_]

I mean in most other places people have simply realized that unless there is an immediate risk to life, the only thing high speed police chases do is create that very risk.

Nicely contrasts with all the news about the omnipresent license plate scanners - it's just pointless, don't take the risk, arrest them at your leisure.

[TravisLS]

Worth noting that many people who run from the police also have fake or stolen plates.

[mrtksn]

That shouldn't matter, after all, even if the plate is legit, you can't just find a person's location from the database. They usually have some legal address or something, not live location.

So unless there's an immediate danger, there is no reason for chasing people and create dangerous situations. You can just follow them around from the severance cameras and catch them once they are no longer on the move. Even if you don't have disability for one reason or another, it still doesn't make much sense to engage in high-speed driving around people minding their own business.

[stefan_]

I don't get this gotcha. The license plate scanner associates a plate with a location and time, it doesn't care for who drives it. In a chase, you know the plate, you don't know the location. Seems perfect?

[nradov]

Perfect how? The license plate scanner can only tell that a particular plate number was in a particular place at a particular time. It doesn't know if the plate was fake or stolen, or who was driving the vehicle, or if there was contraband in the vehicle. Stopping fleeing vehicles is one of the most effective ways to catch people with outstanding arrest warrants and get illegal weapons off the streets.

[lukan]

I think the idea is, if you know where the car is and where it is going, you don't need to chase it openly on high traffic areas with high risk of accidents. You use restraint and take them at a safer place. (surely won't work all the time)

[nradov]

You don't know where it's going.

[shoddydoordesk]

So your proposal is to just let the criminals run away? And that somehow won't embolden them further?

"Once this baby hits 88mph, we're home free!"

Air support is used to coordinate with law enforcement up ahead to deploy spikes to end the chase.

You are just repeating empty political talking points that simply don't work in the real world.

[mapt]

Basically, letting them run away and then setting up a raid at their house the next morning is safer for everyone. If you can follow them from altitude well enough to do that, you reduce risk dramatically relative to either interception or chase.

> They could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT.

Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry? PIT maneuvers are extraordinarily dangerous, especially at high speeds.

[shoddydoordesk]

Buddy, most of these are stolen cars. Do you think they are driving them home and parking it in the driveway?

If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home.

>Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry?

I've heard cops say something similar on body cam footage.

[zrobotics]

"If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home."

I'm not sure that the cops pursuing people at those speeds is doing anything besides making the situation more dangerous. Police in the US are grossly undertrained, I wouldn't trust them to actually be competent at what is very technical and difficult driving.

One would think that basic firearm safety would be the bare minimum, since we pay them to carry a gun. However, I have had to vacate a shooting range 3 times due to police showing up and being unsafe with firearms. I have had this happen in 3 different ranges, where off-duty cops have shown up and proceeded to ignore basic safety rules like not flagging people with guns. I'm not dumb enough to try to give a cop a safety lecture, so I've always packed up my stuff and left. However, if they aren't even given enough training to not figure out to point their guns downrange instead of at the firing line, they aren't trained well enough to trust with something technical and difficult like a pit maneuver.

One of these times was at a CA range, they were socal cops. Training standards for police in the US are woefully low, most cops aren't able to hit the broad side of a barn given ideal circumstances. They agitate about how dangerous their job is, but they don't train like it is. They fire a few rounds a year and have absolutely horrendous marksmanship standards. Don't get fooled, your average cop has roughly zero idea on firearms safety or even how to use the darn things.

[prmoustache]

> If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home.

They would not even try to reach those speed if they weren't chased. A criminal who thinks he escaped the police will try to not attract attention. They would just follow the normal flow of the traffic and you can follow their path thanks to the millions of cameras and the helicopter mentionned earlier. We are not in the 70's anymore.

You can follow them from a distance they can't spot you so you can lock the road if they turn back and dispatch police force form in various exit points of an highway without starting an high speed chase.

High speed chase is about cops endangering the public for the thrill and adrenaline really. They do that because they like it, not because they need it to arrest criminals.

[netsharc]

If they're eluding cops at 100mph and being a danger to the public, it's because they're being chased by cops...

But well, it's America, having the risk of a stray cop bullet hitting you because just like car chases, shootous are inevitable, makes it safer!

[bildung]

It's probably reasonable to take a step back here and ask: Why is this not a universal problem? It's not as if every juristication outside the US simply lets criminals run away.

[bluedino]

A lot of departments terminate chases very early

[shoddydoordesk]

They could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT.

[wredcoll]

Why are you countering his political talking points with your own?

[twelvedogs]

just like so many things that work in every country but the US apparently

[sokoloff]

In many cases, the driver is not associated with the plates, with the car and/or plates being stolen.

[dylan604]

John Oliver recently did a segment on police chases

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8