Police Chases: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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Our main story tonight concerns police chases. They're famously a staple of action movies and cop shows, a time filler on local news, and also the subject of a series of late 90s TV specials, VHS tapes, and a spin-off show hosted by former Sheriff John Burnell, a man with a flair for the dramatic.

Some crooks think a motorcycle is the ultimate escape vehicle. But when it comes to winning pursuits, any cop will tell you it's not what you drive, it's how you drive. When an angry driver takes his personal problems on the road, it's called road rage.

It can turn a normal person into a violent criminal. Drunks don't know when to stop drinking, and drunk drivers don't know when to stop driving. The weather can be the deciding factor in a pursuit. When it's good, we take it for granted. But when it's bad, it could mean disaster.

So buckle up. In the next hour, you'll see some of the most terrifying moments police cameras have ever captured. So buckle up, because the chase is on.

So buckle up.

This is your first class ticket to high-speed action. And you're in the driver's seat.

-♪ Ah! -♪

But hold on. You're not even in the driver's seat. You haven't been the whole time. Still, say what you will about John Burnell, like that he delivers lines with the subtlety of a community theater actor's understudy while dressed like the star of a Cialis commercial.

He is right to imply that police chases can be dangerous. And for a long time, we didn't know exactly how dangerous because the federal government doesn't reliably track deaths from them. But when the San Francisco Chronicle recently compiled their own database, they found over a six-year period, more than 3,300 people died nationwide in police pursuits.

That's an average of nearly two a day. On top of which, a majority of those killed weren't even the fleeing drivers, with over 500 of the victims innocent bystanders. All of which is probably why a DOJ report once called high-speed chases,

possibly the most dangerous of all ordinary police activities, with a former sheriff describing them as, like firing a 4,000-pound bullet down the street. A visual that I'm pretty sure just gave Wayne Lapierre a life-threatening boner. -♪ ♪ -♪

And the thing is, even when chases don't end tragically, they can still do a ton of damage, as this man experienced last year. A car being chased by West Memphis police

hit this man's home in South Memphis on Halloween.

Why would y'all come over here chasing somebody,

and then he hits an innocent bystander's house?

I'm fucked the fuck off, because I feel like they did not go through protocol,

and they need to keep that shit over there.

Yeah! He's completely right there, because you expect to see certain things in a front yard on Halloween. Pumpkins, fake cobwebs, one of those towering skeleton decorations that looks like Jacob Elordi got electrocuted.

But not a car wreck caused by a police chase. And while fleeing drivers are usually depicted in movies and TV shows as violent criminals, in real life, that is rarely the case. Researchers found roughly 90% of pursuits are initiated because of traffic violations. And the reasons people tend to flee are often

relatively mundane, from their license being suspended, to being on probation, to simply saying they feared the police. And this combination of high-stakes chases over low-stakes infractions has resulted in situations like this. Totally preventable tragedy in Georgia.

Larry Turner still can't believe his best friend of 30 years is gone.

I lost my brother.

Sixty-year-old William Johnson was killed Sunday just before noon as he waited on a red light at McAfee and Candler. That's when this speeding SUV came out of nowhere and crashed into him. Turner was floored when he learned

a Georgia State trooper was chasing the driver of the SUV for a seatbelt violation.

It's just not worth losing a life,

or even being injured, it's just not worth it.

Over a seatbelt?

Exactly, because that is absurd. The whole point of a seatbelt law was to keep people safe on the road, so it's more than a little counterproductive to then enforce it by turning the road into a fucking NASCAR track. And that is not a one-off of the fatal chases

the Chronicle was able to review in depth. Over 1,500 people died in pursuits initiated over traffic infractions, non-violent crimes, or indeed, no crime at all. In fact, people have died in chases that started with attempted police stops for things as petty as having tinted windows or a broken taillight.

Which is just ridiculous, because someone who hasn't gotten around to fixing their taillight doesn't deserve to be dangerously chased by the police. What they deserve is an ADHD diagnosis. In fact, if anyone with a broken taillight is watching this show right now, I have an important message

for you. You have clothes in the dryer, they've been in there for days, get them out. So, given all of that, tonight, let's talk about police chases. Why they happen, and why the risks involved can massively outweigh the benefits. And let's start with the fact, the police have been chasing cars

basically since they were first invented. One of the first reported chases was in St. Louis in 1906, when a driver was pursued by what were delightfully known as skidoodle cops.

-♪ Skidoodle cops ♪ -♪ Skidoodle cops ♪

Chasey soon became prevalent across the country, but started getting a lot more attention in the 90s, in large part, thanks to this.

Pursuits really became a thing with O.J. Simpson is in the driver's seat. They predated O.J., but that kind of elevated the pursuit to something much larger. All I did was love Nicole, and all I did was love her. That was the one that made everyone realize, wow, this is, like, this incredible spectator sport.

Yeah, the O.J. chase was one of those jaw-dropping moments in the history of TV. Right up there with the moon landing, Nixon's resignation, and that time the Today Show anchors tried to dress up as the characters from the Peanuts comics and ended up looking like something from your darkest nightmares.

-♪ Darkest nightmares ♪ -♪ Darkest nightmares ♪

The O.J. Chase attracted around 95 million viewers, ushering in a new era of police chases becoming entertainment. For a while, one officer in California even ran a paid service that alerted subscribers when a life pursuit was on TV. And people still love watching them. In 2023, Pluto TV launched a 24-hour chase channel, which sounds about right, doesn't it?

The sentence, Pluto TV launched a 24-hour police chase channel, is the exact type of depressingly accurate nonsense sentence that just permeates our worlds right now. You know, like, the Hawk Tour girl was in the pilot of Chad Powers on Hulu, or Jimmy Fallon and Malala did Bees in the pilot of Chad Powers on Hulu, or Jimmy Fallon and Malala

did Bees in the Trap on TikTok. If you'd said those words to me 20 years ago, I'd have thought I was having a stroke. And sometimes, even the participants in a chase seem to realize that they're part of a media event.

Last year, there was a crazy pursuit. These guys were doing donuts on Hollywood Boulevard.

Whoa.

Oh, wow. They're trying to have a good time right now.

What?

And then they ended up going by restaurants where people were watching it in a bar, and people would run out on the sidewalk and cheer them on as they were going.

No!

Ah! Ah! Ah!

And a TMZ tour bus tried to stop them on the freeway. Are they gonna stop it?

Whoa!

And one of the guys threw a sandwich at the TMZ bus. How's this for only an L.A. moment?

It doesn't get more Hollywood than that.

Okay, first, regarding the donuts, hell yeah. And two, I would say that's the most fucked up thing TMZ has ever done, but remember, it did publish the headline, Jerry Sandusky Feasting on Wieners Behind Bars, so let's call it a close second. But obviously, chases don't just take place in L.A.,

they happen all over the country. And that brings us to an important point, which is that depending on where you live, the policies governing them can vary widely. There are no mandated national standards,

one department in Minnesota even created this helpful acronym.

Shark helps officers determine when to pursue.

before one genius changed everything.

or for any charge. And in many places, or precision immobilization technique. greatly increasing the likelihood of injury or death.

to train on the procedure. You hear that? That's the sound of a good day. Today I got the opportunity to train with some of our patrol deputies on the emergency vehicle operations course, the pit maneuver. By far one of my favorite things, just getting up next to the bad guy and making him pull over. It's so much fun.

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is playing Mario Kart.

there's gonna be an actual person in that bad guy's car and not a cartoon sex criminal. But while pit maneuvers are sometimes presented as a way to safely bring a pursuit to an end, reporters have found that since 2017, at least 87 people across the country have been killed by them, including 37 people

who were passengers or bystanders, and seven children. And that is likely an undercount. And yet, some departments seem to pit cars at the slightest provocation. Take this investigation into the practice in Arkansas.

In the past four years, state police attempted to, or pitted drivers at least 306 times. Almost half of those were last year.

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Records show many started as minor traffic violations. That's what happened here when Senior Corporal Rodney Dunn said he clocked a driver speeding. His dash cam video shows the SUV slowed down and flashed hazards. He followed for three minutes then pitted the SUV which caused it to spin into a concrete barrier and flip.

-...flip. -...flip.

The video kept rolling as the driver, who was pregnant, explained why she didn't stop.

I just didn't feel like the shoulder was big enough

with the wall.

Okay, well, this is what happens when people don't stop for us.

You wreck us?

We hit the vehicle.

It's true, the officer pitted her car while she was looking for a safe place to pull over. And how does that keep anyone safe? When they were trying to save Balloon Boy, they didn't shoot him out of the sky, did they? Now, did they consider it? Almost definitely. No way was it never on the table, but they didn't.

And the ending didn't matter because the boy was never in the balloon. History should have ended there. And look, you should know,

to indicate that you're seeking a safe place to stop.

to wind up on the side of the highway doing a fucking headstand. The point is, the dangers you can face from police chases depend heavily on where you are, but they can also depend on who you are, because unsurprisingly, some are more at risk than others. While black people account for roughly one-eighth of the U.S. population, they make up more than a third

of fatalities caused by police pursuit, and upwards... and account for upwards of a quarter of the bystanders killed as a result of them. And this is for many reasons, from fear of police, to racial profiling, to the problematic level of traffic enforcement in black neighborhoods. That's actually something that we discussed

in our episode on traffic stops, an episode that ended, and this is true, like this, and you are just gonna have to trust me that it made sense at the time.

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And frustratingly, we've known about this for a while. The problems with police chases have been discussed extensively over the years. Experts say that as in so many areas of policing, policies around chases are subject to a pendulum effect, moving in one direction or the other,

depending on public opinion, police leadership, or politics. In Milwaukee, for instance, after the deaths of four innocent bystanders from police vehicle pursuits, they adopted a new policy in 2009, basically limiting police to only chasing in the event of a violent felony. But, over the years, for a variety of reasons,

those rules got loosened. First, to allow officers to pursue carjacked vehicles, then to allow pursuits in reckless driving cases or when a car was linked to drug dealing. And in that time, the city saw a 20-fold surge of police chases, and unsurprisingly,

as the number of pursuits increased, the number of injuries and deaths did as well. And of course they did. If you have more of one, you're going to have more of the other. It's like how when the number of Ryan Murphy shows increased, so did the number of Sarah Paulson wigs.

It's basic cause and effect. And while cops often argue that restricting chases means more people will flee them and that crime will increase, experts have called that a myth, saying research suggests that if police did not chase offenders, there would be no significant increase in the number of suspects who flee,

and pointed out that agencies with more restrictive pursuit policies do not have higher crime rates. And it is worth remembering that especially when it comes to minor traffic offenses, cops do have other tools at their disposal to bring someone to justice. Just watch as a reporter asks a criminal justice professor,

a former cop, by the way, to explain why it might be okay to let someone drive away.

There are some who will argue that it is law enforcement's job to enforce the law full stop. So when somebody flees from a traffic stop, they are violating the law, and it's the duty of that law enforcement officer to pursue. And to pursue until that pursuit is terminated.

What do you say to those folks?

I call BS. We have camera networks all over the city. We have license plate readers all over. Once you know the identity of this person, turn this over to the investigators.

Yeah, you don't always need to chase someone, especially when the police have an absolute mountain of surveillance tech at their disposal, which is, spoiler alert, a future story we've got planned for this show. We've actually got a bunch of fun stories

in the pipeline for you. Police surveillance tech, Trump versus the sun, and graves. What they are, why they're not what you think, and what the government can do to stop all the sex on top of them. And look, look, I do get that police can be infuriated seeing someone drive away. It is what's simmering just beneath the surface

of this indignant John Bonnell walk and talk in one of his many police chase specials.

Part of the insanity of any pursuit is a seeming contradiction of responsibility. An officer is expected to be responsible for himself, his motor vehicle, innocent motorists, bystanders, and even the suspect. At the same time, he's expected to catch up

to a maniac on wheels who's driving like a bat out of hell.

Okay. First, keeping all those people safe is quite literally a police officer's job. Let's not complain about doing the bare minimum here. But second, it is so hard to take anything that man says seriously, because I'm always expecting him to motion to his right and start selling

portable rotisserie cookers. And the thing is, as this professor who has studied chases for decades points out, it's not unreasonable to expect the police to be the more responsible party.

Police are trained and are there to deal with people who aren't making good decisions, can't make good decisions. And there's gotta be an adult in the room, and it's not the person fleeing.

Yeah, weird zoom into his face aside there, that man is right. When you're a police officer, being the adult in the room is kind of your job. That's honestly true for anyone whose job involves dealing with the public.

Calming things down is basically 50% of the job of a police officer, 70% of the job of a target cashier, and 100% of the job of a Waffle House employee. Listen, listen, we're all here for the same reasons, so let's just focus on what unites us here. We all love breakfast,

and none of us are allowed in an IHOP. Everybody, chill the fuck out! But too often, police will give chase when the threat to public safety is minimal, and then, when something goes wrong, simply blame the person they were pursuing.

Just watch a sheriff in South Carolina blow off some basic questions about the death of a teenage boy in a chase that began over a traffic stop.

Am I happy that the young man died? No. But that was a position that he put himself in.

He was a passenger in the car.

He still put himself in there because he's in that car with somebody that's doing this. Why didn't he, why didn't they tell him, the driver, to stop? Why didn't they do that?

Well, they might have.

We don't know. Right. We don't know. It's one of many things we don't know, including what the fuck is going on next to that man. What is that thing? Is it a Halloween decoration? I sure hope so, because my second guess is an American Girl doll who joined the Klan.

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And my third is a voodoo doll holding a string of anal beads. And even when a police chase injures a bystander, cops can refuse to take any blame. Take this story from last year of a woman who sued a Michigan police department claiming officers engaged in negligence and reckless conduct during a pursuit

that seriously hurt her.

This is Brittany Turner, her body shattered with broken bones and burns, after being slammed into by a driver who was speeding away from Warren police who were in a high-speed pursuit this past June. This is Warren police video of officers getting Turner out of her burning car. Turner is suing Warren police for 60 million dollars.

The bad guy strikes an innocent motorist,

yet we're blamed.

Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me?

No, I'm not kidding. I'm being deadly serious right now. And you should know, the bad guy in question there was being pursued after police tried pulling him over for driving without a visible license plate. Now, to their credit, that local news station took that cop's response to the woman who'd been hurt, and she was, understandably, unimpressed.

They said there's only one person responsible for you being hit and hurt like this, and it's the person behind the wheel that they were pursuing. What do you think of that?

I think... I can't say the word that I want to say on camera. -...but I believe that that is bull. -...yeah.

Because it is. Specifically, it is bull shit. And it's frankly incredible that she's exercising more restraint with her use of profanity than the cops did with a 4,000-pound vehicle. Also, at this point, can we please just let people say shit on the news? Whose innocence are we protecting anymore?

I tried to play Halo last week because I'm thinking about getting into hobbies, and as soon as I logged on, a ten-year-old called me a cunt. The linguistic battle for decency has been lost. And look, I am not saying fleeing drivers are never at fault. Of course they are. But law enforcement needs to be focusing on minimizing

the risks of dangerous situations instead of exacerbating them. And unfortunately, even when officers flout policy and people die, they often avoid both criminal charges and internal discipline. But that probably shouldn't be surprising,

given all the barriers to police accountability. Many states have legal protections that make it very difficult to hold officers and agencies liable for chase-related injuries. In fact, that woman you just saw had her case dismissed because current Michigan law requires that

unless the police car itself crashed into her, the police bear no liability. A decision that she is now appealing. And that is just the beginning here, because as we've discussed before, cops are also protected by what's called

the Qualified Immunity Doctrine. Thanks to that, the Supreme Court hasn't sided with any victim of a fatal police chase, even an innocent bystander, since it created Qual immunity. While at the same time, it's been steadily building up a body of case law that makes it even harder for families to sue. And even in one incredibly rare instance,

where cops were held criminally accountable for a death resulting from a chase, when a jury convicted two D.C. cops for their roles in a deadly chase of a man on a moped and a subsequent cover-up, Donald Trump pardoned them as one of his first acts in office,

which in a different world, a better, kinder world, one worth saving, might have been a scandal. And I should say, even some law enforcement officers will tell you, chases, as they are currently practiced, are just a recipe for needless death.

Last year, of our pursuits, 40% ended in a crash. So, the numbers are just there, and then, you know, eventually, if you're just chasing everyone just to chase everyone, you know, people are gonna get killed.

Exactly. And it's honestly refreshing to hear someone in law enforcement state the obvious here, instead of acting like society will fall apart if cops in Massapequa don't get to Tokyo Drift. So, what can we do?

Well, I would argue there are some simple steps that we could take. First, there should be national standards for how and when police can initiate a chase, like only allowing officers to conduct pursuits when a violent crime has been committed and the suspect poses an imminent threat

to commit another one. As experts have explained, if an officer can apprehend a traffic law violator or a criminal offender through safer methods, then they should do so. On top of that, cities and states could pass laws that let individuals sue government officials and prohibit qualified immunity as a defense in state court.

But something has to be done here. Because the police's commitment to public safety shouldn't effectively end once they turn their sirens and lights on. And if a chase truly is like firing a 4,000-pound bullet, perhaps cars in this context should be treated as weapons. Tools to be handled carefully and not deployed

in every single scenario. Because despite what too many cops say and what TV and films have conditioned us to believe, the idea that high-speed pursuits are the only way to ensure public safety is, to borrow a word, that this woman would not allow herself to say.

that this woman would not allow herself to say. Absolute bullshit.