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I'm not clear why they would be responsible for his hitting a pedestrian.

There is a belief pervading society that criminals are not responsible for their own actions, that other things or people are responsible.

Moral questions aside, police have a lot more indemnity when chasing criminals than 2 brothers in a car hoping to make a citizen's arrest.

just to be clear - we did not expect to catch him, get him out of the car, and make a citizen's arrest. We just wanted to know what direction he went in to tell the police, but he was too fast.

One reason would be because they screeched their tires out of a parking lot in a rush to capture him, possibly to beat and murder him... from his perspective.

If they caused a guy to flee for his life (whatever the guy's crime) and in the process he hit and killed somebody, then you can bet a judge would be interested in the details.

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