Super Fun Time Thread - You do your pursuits, I'll do mine

[Hambo]

One size fits all policies are rarely a good idea. Not everyone who refuses to stop drives like a maniac. Just because you terminate, or don't even initiate a pursuit, does not mean that someone won't drive like Mario Andretti on crank when they see a cruiser.

[farscott]

farscott, I like the way you think. That said, decisions like that are made far above the pay grade of the people posting here. Nonetheless, making procedural and policy decisions based solely or primarily on liability and optics concerns will, sooner or later, result in bad consequences caused by bad people. I urge you to contact your elected officials. (Not being sarcastic. In all seriousness, we need people like you behind us.)

Thanks for the kind words and the suggestions. As we live in a rural community, the sentiments toward law enforcement are bit more traditional than those in larger cities. Not saying that everything is perfect, but LE gets a lot more respect here than in other places. We do have personal relationships with many of the people making policy and they are well aware of how we think.

[TC215]

An agency in the area I work got into a pursuit last night. It was late at night with little traffic. They discontinued after the suspect began driving the wrong way on a highway at 100+ miles an hour.

A few minutes after the officer discontinued, the suspect crashed head on into another vehicle and killed the innocent driver.

The pursuing agency is not allowed to PIT. I’m a big fan of the PIT, simply because it allows us to, hopefully, end a pursuit on our own terms.

[PearTree]

I don't think you'd do it from a moving vehicle. I think you'd do it kind of like stop sticks and maybe in combination with that sort of thing. Setup a loose perimeter, stop, deploy, once it's out of our area either relocate or go back in service, depending. One drone wouldn't have to keep up with the pursuit. You'd just have to have a moving perimeter to keep it in sight. The technology to hand it off is probably what's going to be the trick, not speeds of drones or the like. Some indicator that says "it's that one" from one to the next.

And for bigger city pursuits, speeds "as the drone flies" and ignoring traffic would probably keep a lot of them in sight. Sure, balls out on the interstate or more rural environments that approach probably won't be nearly as effective.

What you describe I can see working in very urban areas, guess I should have put the disclaimer in my AO which is all highways. We have helicopters galore between our county and the surrounding counties. The drone is more useful in the inevitable foot bail situation since it flies so much lower to the ground.