Shortly after midnight yesterday morning, a lone police officer patrolling Seattle's streets near North 90th Street and Aurora Ave spotted a late-model SUV being driven erratically. She attempted a to make routine traffic stop, but the driver refused to pull over and a high-speed hot pursuit followed.
It ended abruptly when the eastbound SUV crashed through the front wall and first-story window of a house at 90th and Meridian. When the perp ((I don't see any point to calling him "the suspect" or "the alleged perpetrator") exited his vehicle, the officer attempted to take him into custody, but he assaulted her and attempted to take her service revolver away from her. She managed to retain possession of the firearm, but the driver escaped on foot and as far as I've been able to determine has not yet been taken into custody.
Considering the details of this story, which came together piecemeal from accounts in the Seattle Times, the King-5 TV news site, and the PhinneyWood.com blog, it's hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that allowing hot pursuit is a bad police policy. This incident could have easily ended much worse than it did, and the cops really dodged a bullet -- literally -- getting out of this scrape without any resulting deaths or serious injuries, the all-too-frequent tragic outcomes of this confrontational and unnecessary policy.
No one inside the house at 90th and Meridian was hurt, but one of the residents, who had been sitting on his living-room couch seconds before the SUV crashed into it, spent considerable time picking glass out of his hair afterward. The officer, needless to say, was very fortunate to keep possession of her weapon and avoid serious injury when she was jumped by the enraged and out-of-control perp. Wouldn't it have made more sense to simply record the license number of the suspect vehicle and then contact the driver the next day? In the cold light of day and sobered up, he would likely respond to the prospect of arrest a little more rationally.
Patrol cars today are equipped with video cameras, so there's no need for witnesses to a late-night DWI incident such as this one. At one in the morning on a weekday, with almost no traffic on the streets, the driver, though intoxicated, probably would have made it home without doing damage to himself or anyone else. It's past time to put an end to this macho and childish policy of allowing the police to foment car chases in a crowded city.
Photo by KING-5 News Department.
2 comments:
I honestly believe that the police love high speed chases. If living on Main Street is any indicator. The stretch I live on is residential, wide open, and clearly an incentive to blow out the valves. I had to call to inquire last year why the cops were burning rubber all night outside my bedroom window. They sheepishly told me that the officers were practicing their pursuit skills.
They totally do right there. It's unbelievable.
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