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There are high speed police chases (100mph+) in Los Angeles — no exaggeration — on an almost daily basis. Air support is the primary defense tool for law enforc

There are high speed police chases (100mph+) in Los Angeles — no exaggeration — on an almost daily basis. Air support is the primary defense tool for law enforcement. It's so bad that the local TV stations have their own choppers and a dedicated on-screen UI tailored for the chases with GPS-based tracking and speed. If you're lucky you can catch one of the many YouTube live streams. Here's one from....two days ago: https://www.youtube.com/live/uGiJU-FlpdE https://www.youtube.com/live/uGiJU-FlpdE

stefan_ 11mo ago
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 11mo ago
  Worth noting that many people who run from the police also have fake or stolen plates.
  - stefan_ 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      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 11mo ago
        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 11mo ago
        You don't know where it's going.
  - mrtksn 11mo ago
    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.
- shoddydoordesk 11mo ago
  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.
  - bluedino 11mo ago
    A lot of departments terminate chases very early
    - shoddydoordesk 11mo ago
      They could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT.
  - mapt 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      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.
      - netsharc 11mo ago
        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!
- sokoloff 11mo ago
  In many cases, the driver is not associated with the plates, with the car and/or plates being stolen.
- dylan604 11mo ago
  John Oliver recently did a segment on police chases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8
asdff 11mo ago
They get away from time to time from the airship. Two in one week this past august and I don't think they ever caught the suspects. One drove under an overpass and fled on foot, the other entered LAX airspace which requires waiting on clearance from ATC and got away somehow after that. I don't know why they don't just shoot a magnetic dart at the car with a gps tracker on it.
- efnx 11mo ago
  It would have to be a very special dart. Cars are mostly aluminum and foam. A piercing dart would be dangerous and a magnet would really work.
  - asdff 11mo ago
    Outside certain high performance cars, most cars have steel body panels.
    - bluedino 11mo ago
      Some steel body panels. Much of a car is made of plastic/urethan type materials, hoods are usually aluminum, some bodies are all aluminum....
    - WarOnPrivacy 11mo ago
      > Outside certain high performance cars, most cars have steel body panels. I never thought of my Olds Silhouette minivan as a high performance car. Neat. The rubbery panels were great. I was at school pickup and another parent backed into it. They crushed the front fender to the firewall. Then they pulled up and it popped out. They were freaked out but it was fine. And it's just a car.
    - Aurornis 11mo ago
      It’s more common than that. A lot of cars have aluminum panels now.
  - Esophagus4 11mo ago
    These exist! https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-gps-tracking-darts-to-avoid-dangerous-pursuits https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-g... https://www.starchase.com/products/vehicle-mounted-gps-launcher/ https://www.starchase.com/products/vehicle-mounted-gps-launc...
dilippkumar 11mo ago
> There are high speed police chases (100mph+) in Los Angeles — no exaggeration — on an almost daily basis. How is anyone driving at that speeds in LA traffic?
- dylan604 11mo ago
  Like an asshole. We've all seen them, even if not in a chase. It may not be 100mph+ the whole time, but when there's open air, they'll get there.
BadBadJellyBean 11mo ago
Then why do you have so many car chases? That seems like an odd problem. There must be a reason.
- ripberge 11mo ago
  I have only been to Germany once, but my assessment was that we have a very different population here.
  - BadBadJellyBean 11mo ago
    Possible but it seems like the chases are not even a US problem but more a "certain places" problem. I genuinely wonder what the cause of this behavior is.
    - dylan604 11mo ago
      > I genuinely wonder what the cause of this behavior is. Seriously? It's from people not wanting to be arrested and go to jail. If they get away, perfect. If they don't, well, they were going to jail anyways. Now they have a cool story to tell while in jail. These are not people getting pulled over because they rolled a stop sign. These are people doing dirt, know it, and are willing to try something to avoid getting caught. It's really not complicated
      - samdoesnothing 11mo ago
        I think they're asking why there's such a large population of people willing to commit crimes and then get into high speed chases.
        dylan604 11mo ago
        The cause of the behavior (as phrased when asked) is not wanting to go to jail. Asking why people are in situations where they are committing crimes that could land them in jail is a totally different question. Typically, poverty. Also common, addiction.
chrisweekly 11mo ago
I wonder how much of the high-speed chase "scene" is actually fuelled by all the hoopla. (TV broadcasts of soccer/football matches tend not to show streakers on the field for this reason)
- jjwiseman 11mo ago
  In 2003, "Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn, along with Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Police Chiefs’ Association and the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners sent a letter Feb. 26 to news directors of television stations asking them to consider reducing the amount of police car chase coverage they broadcast." Officials asserted in their letter that live continuous coverage causes dangerous police chases to be looked upon as entertainment, and encourages suspects to flee in pursuit of instant fame. “Dangerous suspects are acquiring instant celebrity status when they recklessly evade police over our streets and highways. This form of notoriety is life threatening and should not occur,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca in the press release. "There have been instances where drivers look out windows and wave. Many [suspects] have made it abundantly clear that they’re enjoying the whole thing,” said Julie Wong, director of communications for the mayor’s office.
  - shmeeed 11mo ago
    Intersting. Did this letter have any effect?
JLO64 11mo ago
Personally I prefer Fox 11's coverage of these chases. The guy they have up there is fun to listen to and always sprinkles in comparisons to past chases.
dudeinjapan 11mo ago
This YouTube video is missing a Kavinsky soundtrack.
Avshalom 11mo ago
The thing is: there shouldn't be. Car chases cause far more damage (including injury and deaths of bystanders) than the crimes that precede them do and "air support" is not a defense against that in any way.
- samtho 11mo ago
  Law enforcement operates in a position where they “can’t lose” an encounter. This is a major cause of rapid and unnecessary escalation with LEOs and the civilians they’ve stopped.
  - ultrarunner 11mo ago
    Friendly reminder that LEOs are civilians as well— while they may dress like it, they are not military.
    - FireBeyond 11mo ago
      Very much so. Perhaps their training shouldn't explicitly use such language and work to increase that separation - LE training is notorious for teaching cops old and new that anyone/anything "not a cop" is not one of them, and is a threat or has threat potential.
  - Avshalom 11mo ago
    I understand, but again, they shouldn't. (This is why we want to abolish them)
- CPLX 11mo ago
  Genuine question. What do you think the alternative is? Let's say for argument's sake, that it was relatively well known that you could just drive away rapidly from a police encounter and successfully escape. Do you think that would affect the number of people who made that decision to do that? I can see both sides of this, but I'm curious what yours is.
  - 11mo ago

stefan_ 11mo ago

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 11mo ago
Worth noting that many people who run from the police also have fake or stolen plates.
- stefan_ 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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 11mo ago
      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 11mo ago
        You don't know where it's going.
- mrtksn 11mo ago
  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.
shoddydoordesk 11mo ago
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.
- bluedino 11mo ago
  A lot of departments terminate chases very early
  - shoddydoordesk 11mo ago
    They could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT.
- mapt 11mo ago
  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 11mo ago
    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.
    - netsharc 11mo ago
      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!
sokoloff 11mo ago
In many cases, the driver is not associated with the plates, with the car and/or plates being stolen.
dylan604 11mo ago
John Oliver recently did a segment on police chases https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVFXUkFx5Y8

asdff 11mo ago

They get away from time to time from the airship. Two in one week this past august and I don't think they ever caught the suspects. One drove under an overpass and fled on foot, the other entered LAX airspace which requires waiting on clearance from ATC and got away somehow after that. I don't know why they don't just shoot a magnetic dart at the car with a gps tracker on it.

efnx 11mo ago
It would have to be a very special dart. Cars are mostly aluminum and foam. A piercing dart would be dangerous and a magnet would really work.
- asdff 11mo ago
  Outside certain high performance cars, most cars have steel body panels.
  - bluedino 11mo ago
    Some steel body panels. Much of a car is made of plastic/urethan type materials, hoods are usually aluminum, some bodies are all aluminum....
  - WarOnPrivacy 11mo ago
    > Outside certain high performance cars, most cars have steel body panels. I never thought of my Olds Silhouette minivan as a high performance car. Neat. The rubbery panels were great. I was at school pickup and another parent backed into it. They crushed the front fender to the firewall. Then they pulled up and it popped out. They were freaked out but it was fine. And it's just a car.
  - Aurornis 11mo ago
    It’s more common than that. A lot of cars have aluminum panels now.
- Esophagus4 11mo ago
  These exist! https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-gps-tracking-darts-to-avoid-dangerous-pursuits https://www.thedrive.com/news/police-tag-fleeing-cars-with-g... https://www.starchase.com/products/vehicle-mounted-gps-launcher/ https://www.starchase.com/products/vehicle-mounted-gps-launc...

dilippkumar 11mo ago

> There are high speed police chases (100mph+) in Los Angeles — no exaggeration — on an almost daily basis. How is anyone driving at that speeds in LA traffic?

dylan604 11mo ago
Like an asshole. We've all seen them, even if not in a chase. It may not be 100mph+ the whole time, but when there's open air, they'll get there.

BadBadJellyBean 11mo ago

Then why do you have so many car chases? That seems like an odd problem. There must be a reason.

ripberge 11mo ago
I have only been to Germany once, but my assessment was that we have a very different population here.
- BadBadJellyBean 11mo ago
  Possible but it seems like the chases are not even a US problem but more a "certain places" problem. I genuinely wonder what the cause of this behavior is.
  - dylan604 11mo ago
    > I genuinely wonder what the cause of this behavior is. Seriously? It's from people not wanting to be arrested and go to jail. If they get away, perfect. If they don't, well, they were going to jail anyways. Now they have a cool story to tell while in jail. These are not people getting pulled over because they rolled a stop sign. These are people doing dirt, know it, and are willing to try something to avoid getting caught. It's really not complicated
    - samdoesnothing 11mo ago
      I think they're asking why there's such a large population of people willing to commit crimes and then get into high speed chases.
      - dylan604 11mo ago
        The cause of the behavior (as phrased when asked) is not wanting to go to jail. Asking why people are in situations where they are committing crimes that could land them in jail is a totally different question. Typically, poverty. Also common, addiction.

chrisweekly 11mo ago

I wonder how much of the high-speed chase "scene" is actually fuelled by all the hoopla. (TV broadcasts of soccer/football matches tend not to show streakers on the field for this reason)

jjwiseman 11mo ago
In 2003, "Los Angeles Mayor Jim Hahn, along with Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Police Chiefs’ Association and the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners sent a letter Feb. 26 to news directors of television stations asking them to consider reducing the amount of police car chase coverage they broadcast." Officials asserted in their letter that live continuous coverage causes dangerous police chases to be looked upon as entertainment, and encourages suspects to flee in pursuit of instant fame. “Dangerous suspects are acquiring instant celebrity status when they recklessly evade police over our streets and highways. This form of notoriety is life threatening and should not occur,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca in the press release. "There have been instances where drivers look out windows and wave. Many [suspects] have made it abundantly clear that they’re enjoying the whole thing,” said Julie Wong, director of communications for the mayor’s office.
- shmeeed 11mo ago
  Intersting. Did this letter have any effect?

JLO64 11mo ago

Personally I prefer Fox 11's coverage of these chases. The guy they have up there is fun to listen to and always sprinkles in comparisons to past chases.

dudeinjapan 11mo ago

This YouTube video is missing a Kavinsky soundtrack.

Avshalom 11mo ago

The thing is: there shouldn't be. Car chases cause far more damage (including injury and deaths of bystanders) than the crimes that precede them do and "air support" is not a defense against that in any way.

samtho 11mo ago
Law enforcement operates in a position where they “can’t lose” an encounter. This is a major cause of rapid and unnecessary escalation with LEOs and the civilians they’ve stopped.
- ultrarunner 11mo ago
  Friendly reminder that LEOs are civilians as well— while they may dress like it, they are not military.
  - FireBeyond 11mo ago
    Very much so. Perhaps their training shouldn't explicitly use such language and work to increase that separation - LE training is notorious for teaching cops old and new that anyone/anything "not a cop" is not one of them, and is a threat or has threat potential.
- Avshalom 11mo ago
  I understand, but again, they shouldn't. (This is why we want to abolish them)
CPLX 11mo ago
Genuine question. What do you think the alternative is? Let's say for argument's sake, that it was relatively well known that you could just drive away rapidly from a police encounter and successfully escape. Do you think that would affect the number of people who made that decision to do that? I can see both sides of this, but I'm curious what yours is.
- 11mo ago