In early June, the Talapoosa County Sheriff's Department initiqated a high speed chase, pursuing a 28-year-old man after a shooting incident in Camp Hill. After a chase in which the Sheriff's Department clocked the man at more than 90 miles per hour, a decision was made to call off the chase because it was too dangerous.

This is wise policy. When a driver refuses to stop for a marked police car it's a "contempt of cop issue" like "a slap in the face." Says Lou Reiter, an international police expert who runs a consulting firm in Tallahassee, Florida. "The whole vision is narrowed down and all he [the officer] sees is the bad guy." Reiter, from both participating in high-speed chases as a police officer and by investigating and researching them, observes that in a high-speed chase the officer develops something like "tunnel vision" and often is not even consciously aware of the surroundings - i.e., weather conditions, other cars, people. It's the "audacity of that person" he says, and the officer thinks: "I'm going to run that sucker right down to the ground."

To refuse to stop for a police officer is a deliberate, contemptuous act, contemptuous of the law, and contemptuous of the officer him/herself. The officer feels like anybody else who has had their authority flaunted, mad. And there is, according to Reiter, a consequent "adrenaline dump" once the chase begins. James Fairfield of the Tallahassee Police Department says that this adrenaline dump and the consequent clouding of judgement in a chase situation most frequently involved younger, less experienced officers.

But, it is this cowboy and Indians "chase for its own sake", the adrenaline-driven chase, that restrictions on police high-speed chases are intended to quell.

As Sue Collins, a lawyer, criminologist, and former police officer says: "Law enforcement is usually boring as hell. When an officer get's involved in high speed chase, everybody wants to be a part of it." This piling on effect has lead to disastrous consequences in a number of cases across the country.

In response to this, some departments have written policy which limits the number of cars which can participate in a police high-speed chase. Other departments have policy in which in order to conduct a high-speed chase, the officer has to 1) be chasing not only a felon, but a violent felon; 2) maintain constant contact with a supervisor for approval of the continuation of the chase, 3) constantly monitor and report the changing environmental conditions like weather, traffic, time of day, etc.

According to Reiter, these are among the most restrictive policies in the country. Some police agencies across the country have adopted such restrictive chase policies, but not the majority, even though it is estimated that about 1% of police pursuits end in fatalities. According to Reiter: "The person being pursued is the most likely to be killed. Second are innocent parties, and third are police officers." An even higher number of police high-speed chases end in traffic accidents - between 30-40%. " And depending on the jurisdiction" Reiter continues, "11-32% end in injury accidents."

These restrictive chase policies are usually resented by officers when they are first implemented. Officers think that the policy will encourage people to just flaunt their authority, but jurisdictions which have tried these policies have not found this to be the case. not brought about what the officers feared, i.e., large numbers of people just refusing to stop for the police, and the policy is now widely accepted. In fact, as Fairfield noted, it is now "common for officers to terminate their own pursuits" on order to protect public safety.

TPD is on the cutting edge with their more restrictive high-speed chase policy, and didn't, like many departments, wait for a chase disaster to happen in Tallahassee to force a change in policy. Police departments come under a lot of criticism, and when we have progressive policy, we need to acknowledge it.