Originally Posted by JRB
When a 3rd party is injured, the criminal actor has no money to pay a judgement. The governmental entity, however, has a big, fat insurance policy.
When a 3rd party is injured, the criminal actor has no money to pay a judgement. The governmental entity, however, has a big, fat insurance policy.
"It's surprising how often you start wondering just how featureless a desert some people's inner landscapes must be."
-Maple Syrup Actual
I may be guilty of oversimplifying this issue, but it seems the taxpayers can pay the occasional settlement for third-party injuries or pay other costs due to increased crime, such as higher premiums for insurance policies, damage to property, etc. While I do not want third parties (like me) being injured or worse, I rather take on the risk to get the order that comes with law and order than to have to be concerned about criminals emboldened by a lack of law enforcement.
Start a drone program. $1500 per hour for blade time may not be affordable, but $3k for a drone might. Drones can't replace an aircraft, yet. But, doing it this way because we've always done it this way is not the way to do things.
Lawyers.
https://www.krqe.com/news/new-mexico...blames-deputy/
In another thread I said I figured before I retire we'll have drones doing the pursuits. I'm all for it. In the meantime you deal with what you have now. Our chopper isn't up much any longer, only special events.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
We don't have a chopper in my county. SO has a Cessna with a sensor ball that costs more than the plane. CHP will respond if they're up. We can mutual aid drones from surrounding agencies and they are useful for crash and crimes scene photos. I predict the technology for drones to follow and transmit video will be here after I retire, but within the next five years.
Unless the FAA changes drone flight regulations you won’t have drones following pursuits. Current regulations require constant line of sight and trying to fly a drone from a moving vehicle at normal speeds is hard enough. Then you have the issue of top speed which most drones can’t keep up with pursuit speeds. The only feasible way to have drones for pursuit would be to have military grade jet engine powered drones flown from a base station and I don’t see that happening.
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.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
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.)
I suppose this is the bottom line of the argument, one way or the other. As a cop, I'm inclined to agree that the rule of law should reign supreme. But as a citizen, I don't accept the risk to my family for some cowboy cop to get his adrenaline rush chasing a shoplifter at 100mph down a residential street.
I work for a city agency that is busier than some, but certainly not LA, Chicago or NYC. As a matter of policy, we don't pursue non-violent criminals. Does that mean we let the occasional traffic violator go? Yep. Has it resulted in wanton disregard for the law in our city? No.
There's a happy/reasonable medium that exists somewhere in the middle there...and I don't pretend to know exactly where it is. But I can say that in my admittedly limited experience (one agency, one jurisdiction), even when we terminate a pursuit, we can generally locate and arrest the perp at a later (and safer) point if really necessary.
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