Court's police chase ruling

won't end policy debates

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 9:31 PM CDT

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that police may use deadly force in stopping a speeding motorist who ignores warnings and poses a danger to the public.

The decision came in a case involving a speeding Georgia teenager, Victor Harris, 19, who was paralyzed in a crash after a police cruiser rammed him from behind and forced him off a two-lane Georgia highway.

The lopsided margin of the decision � it came on an 8-1 vote � would appear to end the debate over high-speed police chases with its implied warning to those who would hit the gas pedal and try to elude arrest when they see police lights flashing that "Stop, police!" means exactly that.

But it won't, of course.

Because every case is different.

We don't like high speed chases because they often end badly with injuries or death � and they put the fleeing offender, police and the public at risk. For that very reason law enforcement agencies across the country struggle with their chase policies and the central question: Which carries more risk � using force, even deadly force, to stop a fleeing car or calling off the chase and letting the offender go.

That's not risk-free, either, of course. If the speeder plows into a family station wagon five or ten miles down the road the second-guessers will be out in force. And it is the police who will get the blame.

Abandonment of the chase was the policy that was advocated by the lone dissenter on the court, Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the lawsuit should have gone to trial and that jurors could have concluded that the late-night chase endangered no pedestrians since there were none on the rural road, and no motorists since the police sirens were warning cars off the road.

While Harris' speeding, refusing to stop and fleeing were serious offenses, "it was not, however, a capital offense, or even an offense that justified the use of deadly force rather than an abandonment of the chase."

Besides, Stevens wrote, the police had Harris' license number. They could easily have arrested him at home.

The majority, however, concluded no "reasonable jury" would rule against the deputy.

The chase was recorded on a police video which the court posted on its Web site � a first for the high court � and Justice Antonin Scalia likened it to a "Hollywood-style car chase of the most frightening sort."

"In the dead of night at speeds that are shockingly fast. We see it (Harris' Cadillac) swerve around more than a dozen other cars, cross the double yellow line and force cars traveling in both directions to their respective shoulders to avoid being hit."

"We are loath to lay down a rule requiring the police to allow fleeing suspects to get away whenever they drive so recklessly that they put other people's lives in danger," Scalia continued. That, he said, would give lawbreakers a "perverse incentive" to flee.

"Instead, we lay down a more sensible rule," Scalia wrote, "A police officer's attempt to terminate a dangerous high-speed car chase that threatens the lives of innocent bystanders does not violate the (Constitution), even when it places the fleeing motorist at risk of serious injury or death."

Five justices joined him in that "sensible rule" so it is now the law of the land. Two other justices said that rule went too far.

We agree with many elements of Scalia's rule. A fleeing car running amok on the road is a deadly weapon that can pose imminent and life-threatening danger to the public � a danger that should be stopped with force if that is necessary. We agree, too, that the Georgia deputy's actions, made in concert with his dispatcher, were reasonable and that he and the police agency should not be targeted in a lawsuit.

But we are also saddened that this case has made a 19-year-old with a few minutes of bad judgment into a paraplegic over what started as a speeding violation for going 73 mph in a 55 mph zone.

Supreme Court verdict or not, we would hope that police agencies across the country do not take this as a green light to initiate chases routinely or to terminate them forcibly as a matter of course.

Deadly force should never be the first option and high-speed chases must be viewed � case-by-case � with the goal of protecting lives, not ending them.

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