7 ms·

The entire situation of a "high-speed chase" followed by such a stand-off for shoplifting a shirt seems ridiculous to me. I don't want to defend the shoplifter

The entire situation of a "high-speed chase" followed by such a stand-off for shoplifting a shirt seems ridiculous to me. I don't want to defend the shoplifter here, but the reality is that these kind of chases and stand-offs come with real risk of injury and death to innocents. The police should be wiser than pursue at all costs for such petty crimes.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
The issue isn't that he stole a shirt, the issue is that he ran from cops, which is a pretty serious crime. Trying to evade arrest and capture is extremely dangerous and if police were to say "well he ran I guess we'll just let him go" crime would skyrocket because thieves would know all you have to do is run and you're home free. edit: I'm not sympathizing with cops or trying to say the use of force here was justified (it wasn't). I'm just saying we need to make attempts to pursue (within reason)
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  This is the police policy we have in the Netherlands – and I believe in much of Europe – and last time I checked crime is not "skyrocketing" here. I am not claiming the police should just give up once someone runs, but there is a cost/benefit ratio to these things, and endangering random people in a high-speed car chase to catch a shoplifter does not seem a good cost/benefit ratio. It's also hardly the case that you can just "run and you're home free". There is CCTV, license plates, the guy can be caught next time he shoplifts, etc. etc. There is more than one way to catch criminals than this kind of brute force.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    A lot of what is wrong with America seems to boil down to broken short-term thinking that places too high a value on "heroics" with a big emotional zing attached to it over actual solutions. We tend to want to "help the homeless" rather than designing a system that reduces the incidence of homelessness. We get all bent out of shape about "justice" and "righteousness" for some detail, like a stolen shirt, completely missing the big picture. America is a fairly religious country. That's probably related. We have this Puritan ethics thing going on, which is often about guilt and shame and being judgy rather than creating a civil environment. We're a young country, founded by misfits who so couldn't make life work in Europe that a very dangerous move to a new land made sense to them. I think this still impacts the culture here, a la the biblical phrase about "the sins of the father...unto the fifth and sixth generation." But I usually get a lot of negative reactions when I try to talk about that. Other people seem to see no connection between the details of how America was founded and the culture it fosters.
    - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
      My own – perhaps controversial – take is that a lot is explained once you realize that the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. One example is The American Dream: the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough, which also implies that being poor is a personal failure: you didn't work hard enough. What this misses is that in the end, you're still going to need people to pick up the garbage, and serve McDonalds, and so forth. turns out not all of society can be composed of lawyers, doctors, and computer programmers. Who knew? There are many more examples, but I don't want to sideline this too much by various political issues. I'm not entirely sure what the source of this is, or if it's recent or more rooted in history. It's just my observations of the US as an adult.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. That doesn't really contradict what I said. Social misfits often do lack empathy. This is sometimes at least partly biologically based, but is frequently compounded by more "normal" types behaving monstrously towards them because they are different. I've raised two special needs sons. They don't intuitively get a lot of social stuff. I've had to carefully explain many things. But the reality is that a lot more social stuff is learned than most normal people want to admit. Needing to actively and intentionally teach it to some people who don't readily pick it up without instruction isn't as bizarre and alien as the world wants to pretend it is. Plus, the lesser emphasis on empathy in America does have positives. Differently wired people tend to have a higher tolerance for things more empathetic people can't cope with. High empathy is not a good thing for being a soldier or a surgeon, both important roles in the world. the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough The origin of that idea is that we had escaped entrenched class structure in Europe. America was conceived of as the land of opportunity. This was a positive thing, not a way to blame poor people for their poverty. For a lot of people, that proved to be true for a long time. Those ideas aren't fundamentally broken, but some things have changed and we aren't coping so well with some of those changes. I think we can resolve our problems. It's not hopeless. I'm just not entirely sure how we get there from here.
- magashna 7y ago
  High speed police chases are also dangerous and police should not engage in them.
  - Osiris 7y ago
    I agree. In most departments now the officer is required to weigh the crime against the potential danger of the chase. Traffic infraction? Don't chase. Felony warrant: Chase? Source: Family members that are in the CHP.
- basch 7y ago
  that doesnt mean there isnt discretion. running over a baby to catch someone who stole an apple is letting principal get in the way of pragmatism. if your choices are "put everyone in the vicinity in massive immediate danger" and "let someone non dangerous escape" Id hope the need to make running itself a serious crime doesnt overrule the duty to the public's overall safety.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- maximente 7y ago
  no, it's just ridiculously punitive to go scorched earth in order to recoup $10 for some already uber-profitable business. hell, there are no chase policies in washington DC among other cities because it's dumb as hell to engage in military style warfare, bystanders be damned, for things like illegally riding an ATV in the street/sidewalk. i'm not sure where this attitude for vengeance/retribution comes from but it's eerily deeply ingrained in the US.
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  > all you have to do is run and you're home free But you're not. Police might get you in half an hour, or tomorrow, or in 2 weeks. Of course that requires proper documentation of the case (photos or even videos, fingerprints, ID of the stolen goods, ...) and follow up, both of which is less exciting than trying to outrace the perpetrator on the highway.
  - MFogleman 7y ago
    Retail videos are garbage 99% of the time. You aren't going to get reliable or useable prints from the scene of a retail store. Even if you did, you have to have a match in AFIS for them to be useful. Even if you do, congrats, you know the guy exists, his name, and social. Now you just have to find him before he robs someone else at gunpoint, and/or ends up killing someone. Every non-tiny police department has a pursuit policy. It tends to be some form of one of the following: 1. Only pursue if the danger of the pursuit is less than the danger of this guy to society. Consider the crime, how easily we can find this guy, current traffic conditions, weather, etc. Guy robber a liquor store and is going 100mph on a well lit, perfectly straight 5 lane highway at 1am on a Wednesday with no other traffic? Get em. Same guy is going 100mph through a residential as the school busses are about to drop off kids? Terminate pursuit. Sadly, it is never that cut and dry 2. Don't pursue unless it was a murder/attempted murder, and the conditions are safe for it. 3. Don't pursue. #3 Works amazing for about 5 years. Somewhere 5-10 years later, the local gangs and career criminals learn that if they just drive fast enough to endanger lives, the cops will leave them alone. State police departments, which usually spend more time on highways, tend to have a policy closer to #1. Because of this, they will often assist local agencies that have a policy of #2 or #3, when they are doing stuff that they expect a vehicle pursuit may ensue. Someone usually brings up "Oh, well if you have the license plate why not just arrest them later." Because it doesn't work that way. You see a masked guy rob a store, jump in a car, and peel out of there at 1am, and don't pursue? If you run the tag, go to the registered house at 1:30am, find the warm vehicle in the driveway, knock on the door, registered owner can answer, and will tell you that a lot of people have keys to his car, he doesn't know anything, he was home asleep. And theres not a thing you can do about it. The only way you can prove it was him was if you saw the driver and are 100% sure its that guy, or you convince him to talk himself into getting caught in a lie, or give up his cellphone, or some other dumb decision.
- busterarm 7y ago
  I'm generally pretty fair and balanced when it comes to police versus public issues, but this is the same kind of shit that excuses the cops that shot the fleeing 16 year old in the head. Cops are public servants. They have a duty to the public to safely enforce the laws and apprehend lawbreakers. This "get the bad guy at all costs" shit has to stop.
  - whamlastxmas 7y ago
    I think all cops are bastards and I don't sympathize with them. I just want a rule of law along with accountability. I'm not of the opinion we need to use overt force when pursuing, but we need to pursue.
- gnode 7y ago
  Generally police must assess the risk to public safety (including the suspect's and their own safeties) and balance that with the need to apprehend the criminal. Capturing a non-violent criminal would not typically justify a high risk of causing a deadly road traffic accident. In the UK for instance, the National Decision Model must be used to evaluate whether to pursue a criminal; authorisation must be requested to conduct a pursuit.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Armed robbery probably doesn't count as non-violent.
- throwaway_law 7y ago
  >issue is that he ran from cops, which is a pretty serious crime. That isn't the issue either (that he ran from cops), the issue is that he began shooting his gun at the cops.
  - AviationAtom 7y ago
    Why did I have to scroll so far down to see this comment? It most likely would not have escalated to that level had he not shot. It probably doesn't help that they later mistook something else for being shots too.
- pariahHN 7y ago
  Yes but for a shirt? Capturing a shirt shoplifter is worth the same effort and potential damage to innocents as a murderer? Or a bank robber? Or an organized group hitting electronics retailers? If someone refuses to pay a parking ticket, how much collateral damage is worth getting them to pay their ticket? Also I feel your comment may be implying that this sort of hyper aggressive enforcement is the only thing keeping crime down - I would suspect that crime at the level of shoplifting a shirt is more often due to need and desperation than to purely malicious intent, and while hyper aggressive enforcement may have some deterrent effect those crimes would probably be better resolved by trying to eliminate the core issues driving them in the first place.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Trying to evade arrest and capture is extremely dangerous and if police were to say "well he ran I guess we'll just let him go" crime would skyrocket because thieves would know all you have to do is run and you're home free. Talk about minimal returns. There are 1000 other factors (in police, laws, and culture) to fix before crime skyrockets from not "catching with excessive force random guys who did minor/no offenses and tried to run away". Starting from social support for poorer districts and a legal/prison system that doesn't encourage recidivism... While we're at it, in no civilized western or eastern country is "getting out of your car when stopped by a traffic cop" something that's met with a shooting... It's like the police force is not professional over there, but just a joke with a gun, and on the first adverse situation (which could be as "adverse" as merely meeting a black guy) they get their guns out rather than doing any critical assessment, handling of the situation, etc. Sorry, un untrained thug can do the same exact thing. There should be higher standards from police officers...

whamlastxmas 7y ago

The issue isn't that he stole a shirt, the issue is that he ran from cops, which is a pretty serious crime. Trying to evade arrest and capture is extremely dangerous and if police were to say "well he ran I guess we'll just let him go" crime would skyrocket because thieves would know all you have to do is run and you're home free. edit: I'm not sympathizing with cops or trying to say the use of force here was justified (it wasn't). I'm just saying we need to make attempts to pursue (within reason)

Carpetsmoker 7y ago
This is the police policy we have in the Netherlands – and I believe in much of Europe – and last time I checked crime is not "skyrocketing" here. I am not claiming the police should just give up once someone runs, but there is a cost/benefit ratio to these things, and endangering random people in a high-speed car chase to catch a shoplifter does not seem a good cost/benefit ratio. It's also hardly the case that you can just "run and you're home free". There is CCTV, license plates, the guy can be caught next time he shoplifts, etc. etc. There is more than one way to catch criminals than this kind of brute force.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  A lot of what is wrong with America seems to boil down to broken short-term thinking that places too high a value on "heroics" with a big emotional zing attached to it over actual solutions. We tend to want to "help the homeless" rather than designing a system that reduces the incidence of homelessness. We get all bent out of shape about "justice" and "righteousness" for some detail, like a stolen shirt, completely missing the big picture. America is a fairly religious country. That's probably related. We have this Puritan ethics thing going on, which is often about guilt and shame and being judgy rather than creating a civil environment. We're a young country, founded by misfits who so couldn't make life work in Europe that a very dangerous move to a new land made sense to them. I think this still impacts the culture here, a la the biblical phrase about "the sins of the father...unto the fifth and sixth generation." But I usually get a lot of negative reactions when I try to talk about that. Other people seem to see no connection between the details of how America was founded and the culture it fosters.
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    My own – perhaps controversial – take is that a lot is explained once you realize that the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. One example is The American Dream: the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough, which also implies that being poor is a personal failure: you didn't work hard enough. What this misses is that in the end, you're still going to need people to pick up the garbage, and serve McDonalds, and so forth. turns out not all of society can be composed of lawyers, doctors, and computer programmers. Who knew? There are many more examples, but I don't want to sideline this too much by various political issues. I'm not entirely sure what the source of this is, or if it's recent or more rooted in history. It's just my observations of the US as an adult.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. That doesn't really contradict what I said. Social misfits often do lack empathy. This is sometimes at least partly biologically based, but is frequently compounded by more "normal" types behaving monstrously towards them because they are different. I've raised two special needs sons. They don't intuitively get a lot of social stuff. I've had to carefully explain many things. But the reality is that a lot more social stuff is learned than most normal people want to admit. Needing to actively and intentionally teach it to some people who don't readily pick it up without instruction isn't as bizarre and alien as the world wants to pretend it is. Plus, the lesser emphasis on empathy in America does have positives. Differently wired people tend to have a higher tolerance for things more empathetic people can't cope with. High empathy is not a good thing for being a soldier or a surgeon, both important roles in the world. the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough The origin of that idea is that we had escaped entrenched class structure in Europe. America was conceived of as the land of opportunity. This was a positive thing, not a way to blame poor people for their poverty. For a lot of people, that proved to be true for a long time. Those ideas aren't fundamentally broken, but some things have changed and we aren't coping so well with some of those changes. I think we can resolve our problems. It's not hopeless. I'm just not entirely sure how we get there from here.
magashna 7y ago
High speed police chases are also dangerous and police should not engage in them.
- Osiris 7y ago
  I agree. In most departments now the officer is required to weigh the crime against the potential danger of the chase. Traffic infraction? Don't chase. Felony warrant: Chase? Source: Family members that are in the CHP.
basch 7y ago
that doesnt mean there isnt discretion. running over a baby to catch someone who stole an apple is letting principal get in the way of pragmatism. if your choices are "put everyone in the vicinity in massive immediate danger" and "let someone non dangerous escape" Id hope the need to make running itself a serious crime doesnt overrule the duty to the public's overall safety.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
maximente 7y ago
no, it's just ridiculously punitive to go scorched earth in order to recoup $10 for some already uber-profitable business. hell, there are no chase policies in washington DC among other cities because it's dumb as hell to engage in military style warfare, bystanders be damned, for things like illegally riding an ATV in the street/sidewalk. i'm not sure where this attitude for vengeance/retribution comes from but it's eerily deeply ingrained in the US.
pgeorgi 7y ago
> all you have to do is run and you're home free But you're not. Police might get you in half an hour, or tomorrow, or in 2 weeks. Of course that requires proper documentation of the case (photos or even videos, fingerprints, ID of the stolen goods, ...) and follow up, both of which is less exciting than trying to outrace the perpetrator on the highway.
- MFogleman 7y ago
  Retail videos are garbage 99% of the time. You aren't going to get reliable or useable prints from the scene of a retail store. Even if you did, you have to have a match in AFIS for them to be useful. Even if you do, congrats, you know the guy exists, his name, and social. Now you just have to find him before he robs someone else at gunpoint, and/or ends up killing someone. Every non-tiny police department has a pursuit policy. It tends to be some form of one of the following: 1. Only pursue if the danger of the pursuit is less than the danger of this guy to society. Consider the crime, how easily we can find this guy, current traffic conditions, weather, etc. Guy robber a liquor store and is going 100mph on a well lit, perfectly straight 5 lane highway at 1am on a Wednesday with no other traffic? Get em. Same guy is going 100mph through a residential as the school busses are about to drop off kids? Terminate pursuit. Sadly, it is never that cut and dry 2. Don't pursue unless it was a murder/attempted murder, and the conditions are safe for it. 3. Don't pursue. #3 Works amazing for about 5 years. Somewhere 5-10 years later, the local gangs and career criminals learn that if they just drive fast enough to endanger lives, the cops will leave them alone. State police departments, which usually spend more time on highways, tend to have a policy closer to #1. Because of this, they will often assist local agencies that have a policy of #2 or #3, when they are doing stuff that they expect a vehicle pursuit may ensue. Someone usually brings up "Oh, well if you have the license plate why not just arrest them later." Because it doesn't work that way. You see a masked guy rob a store, jump in a car, and peel out of there at 1am, and don't pursue? If you run the tag, go to the registered house at 1:30am, find the warm vehicle in the driveway, knock on the door, registered owner can answer, and will tell you that a lot of people have keys to his car, he doesn't know anything, he was home asleep. And theres not a thing you can do about it. The only way you can prove it was him was if you saw the driver and are 100% sure its that guy, or you convince him to talk himself into getting caught in a lie, or give up his cellphone, or some other dumb decision.
busterarm 7y ago
I'm generally pretty fair and balanced when it comes to police versus public issues, but this is the same kind of shit that excuses the cops that shot the fleeing 16 year old in the head. Cops are public servants. They have a duty to the public to safely enforce the laws and apprehend lawbreakers. This "get the bad guy at all costs" shit has to stop.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  I think all cops are bastards and I don't sympathize with them. I just want a rule of law along with accountability. I'm not of the opinion we need to use overt force when pursuing, but we need to pursue.
gnode 7y ago
Generally police must assess the risk to public safety (including the suspect's and their own safeties) and balance that with the need to apprehend the criminal. Capturing a non-violent criminal would not typically justify a high risk of causing a deadly road traffic accident. In the UK for instance, the National Decision Model must be used to evaluate whether to pursue a criminal; authorisation must be requested to conduct a pursuit.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Armed robbery probably doesn't count as non-violent.
throwaway_law 7y ago
>issue is that he ran from cops, which is a pretty serious crime. That isn't the issue either (that he ran from cops), the issue is that he began shooting his gun at the cops.
- AviationAtom 7y ago
  Why did I have to scroll so far down to see this comment? It most likely would not have escalated to that level had he not shot. It probably doesn't help that they later mistook something else for being shots too.
pariahHN 7y ago
Yes but for a shirt? Capturing a shirt shoplifter is worth the same effort and potential damage to innocents as a murderer? Or a bank robber? Or an organized group hitting electronics retailers? If someone refuses to pay a parking ticket, how much collateral damage is worth getting them to pay their ticket? Also I feel your comment may be implying that this sort of hyper aggressive enforcement is the only thing keeping crime down - I would suspect that crime at the level of shoplifting a shirt is more often due to need and desperation than to purely malicious intent, and while hyper aggressive enforcement may have some deterrent effect those crimes would probably be better resolved by trying to eliminate the core issues driving them in the first place.
coldtea 7y ago
>Trying to evade arrest and capture is extremely dangerous and if police were to say "well he ran I guess we'll just let him go" crime would skyrocket because thieves would know all you have to do is run and you're home free. Talk about minimal returns. There are 1000 other factors (in police, laws, and culture) to fix before crime skyrockets from not "catching with excessive force random guys who did minor/no offenses and tried to run away". Starting from social support for poorer districts and a legal/prison system that doesn't encourage recidivism... While we're at it, in no civilized western or eastern country is "getting out of your car when stopped by a traffic cop" something that's met with a shooting... It's like the police force is not professional over there, but just a joke with a gun, and on the first adverse situation (which could be as "adverse" as merely meeting a black guy) they get their guns out rather than doing any critical assessment, handling of the situation, etc. Sorry, un untrained thug can do the same exact thing. There should be higher standards from police officers...