Police say GPS tag darts can eliminate need for dangerous high-speed chases | Hacker News Reader

Police say GPS tag darts can eliminate need for dangerous high-speed chases

cbsnews.com

> "The reality is that everyone runs from the police nowadays."

Since when? This should be a bigger story than the availability of GPS tracking darts.

this article is full of claims in need of data such as this one.

> These darts have been used successfully, nationwide, 10,000 times – meaning 10,000 wanted or accused criminals have been taken off the streets.

every single use of the dart was for a criminal? a 100% conviction rate?

also

> The most important thing about StarChase is every tag saves a life”

every police chase involves a death?

Definitely marketing hyberbole but if they need to use the tag dart, presumably it is someone who is fleeing from the police, so they are _at least_ guilty of eluding, with probably a very high conviction rate for at least that offense, if they go to trial.

Never run from the police, because they never kill people who are cooperating?

Ok... What are the cases where running from the police is the preferable strategy?

When you get away.

You're driving home with your girlfriend and daughter and a police officer pulls you over. You are licensed to carry a gun, and you have your gun in your car. If you drive off you're evading police, and guilty of a crime, and if you don't you get this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile.

I am not saying "you should always run from the cops". What I'm saying is that "there's nothing to fear from cooperating with the police after not committing a crime" is also not true.

The police are responsible for creating an environment in which a sizable portion of the population have a very real fear that any interaction may result in harm or death whether or not you did anything wrong, and so the decision to run may seem "wrong" but it is not unreasonable.

It's against policy for police officers to chase 2 and 3 wheel vehicles because of the high risk of fatality.

All they had to do is say "could save a life" and it would have been a lot more effective because it would be hard to criticize

This reads like a sponsored story to advertise the tracking dart product. I looked through the page a couple times for a disclosure but didn't see one.

> every single use of the dart was for a criminal? a 100% conviction rate?

Maybe uses where that wasn't the case just don't count as "successful".

I always run from the police.

60% of the time, it works every time.

(Edit: This is humour. I don’t always run from the police. I mostly run when they have no reason to chase, because you can always act really confused and be unsure why they were chasing you, arguing you were just late for a meeting.)

I've never really "run" from the police but I've definitely taken a sharp turn onto a side road when I think a cop is going to chase me after I was speeding. lol

Since never. It's one of those classic "say something ridiculous about the public so you can justify mistreating them" cases.

Back in my younger years, I was stopped at a light when a guy pulled up next to me and revved his engine, an invitation to drag to the next light. I revved my engine back. Light turns green, we race to the next light. I see a cop put on their lights behind us.

Now we're both stopped at the light with the cop coming up behind us. I'm on the inside lane. The guy next to me decided he's going to try to run from the cop and makes a right turn.

Cop pulls up beside me, shouts at me "pull around the corner and wait for me" then goes off after the other guy.

So I pulled around the corner and waited for her. She did manage to catch the other guy down the street. About 15 minutes later she comes over to me and says: "I can't believe you did what I asked. I had your plate and would've tracked you down. Don't let me catch you drag racing again. I'm letting you go with a warning."

Yeah that would be pretty effective unless the person being pursued had removed the plates or something.

If she'd have tracked you down the prosecutor would have then had to prove it was you in the driver's seat for any sort of moving violation to stick. In an age before ubiquitous 4k surveillance this would have been a tall order.

Sounds like a lot of extra work instead of facing the consequence you brought upon yourself by drag racing.

In my experience, and I used to get pulled over a lot, being courteous and respectful to an officer is sufficient to avoid a speeding citation with 50% success rate.

And probably 50% off the times when you don’t get a citation, the ticket is reduced.

If you are white, maybe.

However, I noticed that after growing long hair more citations would stick too.

Also depends on the car you drive.

Anecdotally, my brother decided to splurge on his childhood dreamcar (a BMW Z3, second hand of course). He found that he started getting stopped for "random checks" once every couple of trips on the motorway. The probability would also be much higher if the car was freshly washed and shiny.

He then switched back to a normal, more "boring" car, and the "random checks" stopped.

Yep, I've noticed car choice mattering for myself and others as well.

Reflecting back to my original comment:

I guess my goal besides sharing my opinion was wanting to communicate to people who seemed to have the "just be polite and respectful view" is that factors like these make the predictability of politeness or respectability affecting the outcome at all way more variable.

Sometimes to the point of not mattering at all.

FWIW, I'm white and very aware that it may be different if you are not. I thought about it when writing my comment but decided I m just didn't want to drag it into this discussion.

In my experience, it never hurts to be polite and respectful, though even as a white person I've had run-ins with officers who were either in a bad mood or just jerks and no amount of good will on my part seemed to matter. So it didn't help, but giving them lip would've just antagonized them further.

So yeah, maybe it doesn't help. But I can't imagine it would ever hurt.

And finally: I can only reflect my experience as a middle-class middle-aged married straight white Jewish male who's lived a relatively privileged life. I acknowledge that in its entirety. And I'm certainly interested in hearing other folks' experiences and learning from them. If someone wants to chime in about that time they were polite and respectful and it made the situation somehow worse, I'm all ears.

And old. And not poor. And preferably a woman.

Poor, young, black and male are the high crime demographics that get drilled into officers' heads at the academy. People checking more than one of those boxes rarely catch a break.

> the prosecutor would have then had to prove it was you in the driver's seat for any sort of moving violation to stick.

Obviously in a fair system, this would have to be true, but in today's system, is it actually true? Don't a lot of speed cameras automatically mail out tickets by license plate, and it's just assumed that if you're the owner, you're also the driver, unless you can prove someone else actually was?

Amusingly, identical twins still get off the hook for this. And I read on HN recently that in places with particularly egregious automatic enforcement, it becomes popular to wear a ski mask while driving

In the USA it depends by state. Many East Coast counties have speed cameras and red light cameras.

California doesn't have speed cameras but certain jurisdictions have red light cameras. And it depends by jurisdiction whether you have to pay or send it to /dev/null.

In Arizona I know of Scottsdale having speed cameras. Not sure how they get around the legality.

In Germany they take a photo of the front of your car, so your face is on it... Unless you drive there with a left-hand drive car: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081607/Speeding-pu...

In Belgium it's way worse. Picture of the back of your car and you have to pay. No way around it. In fact, if you want to fight the ticket you need to pay to see the photo. How's that for discovery?

>The reality is that everyone runs from the police nowadays.

I think the reality is they have something to sell and are happy to deploy some over the top rhetoric to try. Unfortunately police are inundated with this kind of language building the image that police work is full of action and danger when in fact it's more dangerous to be a pizza delivery driver.

> This eliminates the need for possible high-speed chases, worries about police jurisdiction issues, and any concerns about danger on the roads.

I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road. And by definition since it's high speed it's probably dangerous. GPS darts wouldn't do anything about that, you'd need some sci-fi EMP/hacker darts.

> "The reality is that everyone runs from the police nowadays," said Oak Brook police Chief Brian Strockis.

Well yeah—trust cuts both ways.

> "[Police can] get up next to the vehicle in an undercover car, roll down the window and tag that vehicle without the bad guy even knowing."

These GPS darts must transmit to be useful, so that signal should be detectable. Just another box for criminals to have next to a police scanner and radar trap detector.

> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road.

Generally you need to prove that a particular person was driving the vehicle and that can be hard if you find the vehicle at its registered address 3 days later -- "You can't prove it was me driving". It's a lot easier to charge the driver if you remove them from the drivers seat.

However, it's very commonly accepted that police chasing dangerous drivers causes the criminal to drive beyond their abilities and often get into accidents that are fatal to both the criminal and bystanders.

Many jurisdictions have rules/guidelines spelling out when to abort a chase in the interests of public safety.

This GPS dart would allow them to tail the car from a distance beyond visual range so that the driver doesn't drive nearly as insanely, increasing their chances of reaching their destination in one piece, but still allow police to be close behind so that they can prove who was driving.

So what we need is a dart with suction legs, a camera and an AI, which crawls over the outside of the car to the windshield and takes pictures of the driver :-)

Not to worry, skynet is already working on something better..

I asked ChatGPT if that was true, and he denied it.

He very confidently denied it.

"He" doesn't know anything that wasn't in the training data.

I made a joke.

indeed you did.

Perhaps a high speed drone could do this. The trick would be to deploy something like this safely. That said, I'm not looking forward to the day where drones and AI are part of the standard kit used by police forces. The ability to cheaply surveil people clandestinely as they go about their business does not sound like a future to look forward to.

The GPS device paired with a loitering drone or helicopter carrying a sensor pod, streaming a video stream that can play bird's eye video backwards and forwards, should be sufficient to track a suspect. DARPA was doing this with ARGUS in 2013 with a few hundred cellphone camera sensors bolted together; I would assume the state of the art has advanced in a decade. The saying used to be, "you can't outrun Motorola." The new hotness is likely "you can't outrun the surveillance tech stack."

https://www.wired.com/story/cities-curb-surveillance-baltimo...

https://www.csoonline.com/article/2223941/darpa-s-unblinking...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130204062029/https://www.darpa...

https://web.archive.org/web/20130226141653/http://www.darpa....

Why do you even need the tracker dart if you have a military drone overhead? Unless they pull some Baby Driver shenanigans in a tunnel, it should be easy to track a car. Might not work well in a few major cities (where they likely have camera nets anyway).

Even then you have the right to face your accuser in the US. IANAL but I think that you can't call an AI in for cross, nor a robot. Probably depends heavily on jurisdiction though.

It seems like a drone with a high quality camera would be useful, as well.

How cynical. Let’s just do away with all possible improvements to the system because there might be a counter to them.

The happy reality is that the majority of criminals probably isn’t prepared to deal with all of these tools.

I think a vanishingly small number of criminals have police scanners and radar detectors in this day and age. Especially since police have largely moved over to encrypted trunked radios.

Not to mention that possessing a police scanner while committing a crime is a crime itself.

Some people like to think of criminals as evil geniuses. The reality is that the vast majority of non-financial criminals are barely educated dumbasses and that’s how they got there in the first place.

I think that’s different. When the crime in itself is a dangerous driver then a high speed chase might be the lesser evil given the situation.

But most high speed chases are the result of a criminal trying to escape being captured for a different crime.

But even if it’s a high speed chase involving a dangerous driver, a GPS tag would still be useful. You’re probably much better off having only 1 dangerous driver on the road than 1 dangerous driver + several cop cars also driving at high speeds chasing them.

> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road.

Not all high speed chases are initiated due to reckless driving. Police can lookup vehicles by plate and see if the registered owner has any warrants. Police can just be searching for someone with a known warrant. And plenty of people commit some initial crime and then simply flee in the vehicle.

> Well yeah—trust cuts both ways.

Ironically, I suspect this has more to do with departments more recently terminating chases by policy when the original want isn't a serious crime and where a chase might put other drivers at undue risk.

> Just another box for criminals to have next to a police scanner and radar trap detector.

In a Hollywood movie, perhaps. In reality, most people who are chased by the police do not have these items in their car nor are they planning to engage in some high tech getaway as part of their premeditated crime.

The thing that really calls into question their utility is they offer nothing in identifying the actual driver of the vehicle when the dart was attached. So, you may be able to find an abandoned vehicle, but even if you do and you're fairly sure the registered driver was operating it, you're going to need to do the same detective work as before to determine that beyond a reasonable doubt.

> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road

High speed chases create dangerous driving.

Unless the reason you're pulling someone over in the first place is 'The guy is was driving like he's in a high-speed chase, before we turned on the sirens', the safest thing for the public is to just not chase. It's not worth killing a bystander over.

A 'Don't chase unless the public is actively and acutely in immediate danger' is generally the best policy.

>Unless the reason you're pulling someone over in the first place is 'The guy is was driving like he's in a high-speed chase, before we turned on the sirens', the safest thing for the public is to just not chase. It's not worth killing a bystander over.

Which happens way too frequently, even when the police aren't chasing anybody[0].

Reducing the number of high-speed chases will likely save lives. I'm all for it.

[0] https://gothamist.com/news/nypd-car-struck-and-killed-52-yea...

> getting a dangerous driver off the road [...] you'd need some sci-fi EMP/hacker darts

I've been wondering about how cops might get autonomous vehicles to pull over. I predict that some day the vehicles will be required to be outfitted with a way for a tailing cop to command them accordingly (could simply be a camera watching for flashing lights -- it doesn't need to be complicated or novel) and the vehicle's software would comply. Hopefully that doesn't creep into non-autonomous vehicles.

To your first point, yes it does potentially eliminate the need for high speed chases.

A chase occurs to ensure that the car won't get away. With a GPS tag, it reduces the need for a police car to engage in a high speed pursuit. Where it increases the risk of an accident.

a lot more people die because of high speed chases than are saved. We're talking about chasing people who committed minor infractions. I know if I was a young black man I would get nervous every time I saw blue lights given their history of cops killing black men just to do it.

> I thought high-speed chases were often about getting a dangerous driver off the road.

It isn't though, at least here in Germany. Criminals routinely 'bomb' (for the lack of a better word) ATMs here in Germany, and speed off in Sportscars over the border so that the police can't catch up in time. I think the idea of firing GPS modules on their vehicles might be a genius idea, because the authorities clearly can't catch up in time.

This is a daily occurrence, and it seems like police forces have no power over it.

Like so much police tech, there's very little public data supporting the acquisition of these toys: do police regularly get into high-speed car chases where they can't make out the license plate? Do CCTV networks, which we've been told are meant to solve this problem, not actually do so? Is the law even prepared for evidence in the form of a GPS tag gun?

License plates don't allow you to track someone's location in real time. If it's easy enough to get one of these attached to a vehicle, and the criminal doesn't know/can't remove it, then this would be much more valuable than just having their plates.

Speaking of new-ish "police tech" - I've been really into this grappler thing, for some reason I think it's super cool:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_mRRJHUZrc

That is pretty interesting, (found the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7JGJC4XQ44)

Looks like it entangles with a tire. It might be more difficult to get close enough to engage though? Interesting tech though!

This video shows how it works pretty clearly:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=232772845619943

Indeed, likely better than doing a PIT maneuver. In terms of stack-ranking pursuit tools Choppers are expensive/not all forces have them, PIT is the most accessible but quite dangerous, grappler is probably better, but these GPS dart things are probably a level better again. Never the less, I really like the grappler thing, I find it somehow quite... elegant!

When you said grappler I thought of magnavolt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMtqRir7dco

Art, meet reality:

    The ID Sniper rifle is an art project, a fictional, hoax weapon devised by artist Jakob Boeskov and industrial designer Kristian von Bengtson. The rifle supposedly shoots GPS chips, and the police force may tag persons with this rifle for later easy retrieval.

    It was produced by the fictional company Empire North.

    According to its specs, "It will feel like a mosquito-bite lasting a fraction of a second. At the same time a digital camcorder with a zoom-lens fitted within the scope will take a high-resolution picture of the target. This picture will be stored on a memory card for later image-analysis."

    The design was presented in 2002 in Beijing at the China Police exhibition.

    Boeskov says that a Chinese company offered venture capital and a location for manufacturing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID_Sniper_rifle

Tasers were supposed to eliminate the need for fatal shootings too.

Here's hoping.

Are you implying that tasers have never been deployed when a firearm otherwise would have been?

The key word is “eliminate”, obviously they have not eliminated anything and have brought their own problems with officers using them when they would never use deadly force when trasers are only less lethal and kill plenty of people.

I can't speak to what the parent is saying but I do know that tasers have themselves resulted in deaths, which may never have occurred if the only alternative was shooting. That is, tasers are perceived as non-lethal so they get used more often, even though they can be fatal. Guns are understood to be fatal so likely used in fewer scenarios. Thus there must have been times where an officer would not have used a gun but was willing to use a taser.

Being beat/choked to death also happens. At a certain point I feel like the argument is either needlessly pedantic or the counter aegument is simply "So what?" The alternative to any confrontation is leaving the individual to go free which is hardly a win for their community.

The supposition that every police action is justified, simply because it's being conducted by police, is defined as "authoritarianism".

It's apparently routine to tase someone who runs from a traffic stop because they had a minor warrant that wasn't being actively pursued. I think it's fair to say neither shooting them nor beating/choking them is routine in that situation; there's no real public safety argument (if this person was a danger to the public they'd've been pursuing the warrant already). At some point the actions that this tool is enabling are doing more harm than good.

Did you purposefully misread that statement?

I’m inclined to say they’re still less fatal than bullets would hve been.

except because of that perception (from advertising and lies by taser) police deploy them at the drop of a hat when deadly force wouldn't otherwise be used.

They are not non-lethal, just "less lethal with an arm of taser lawyers/doctors who will justify any deaths that occur and get it labeled excited delirium a made up condition"

Right, thanks!

They were pitched as a non-lethal alternative to sidearms-- to incapacitate subjects in situations where deadly force was your only other option.

In practice, they're a convenient way to end inconvenient conversations.

Was curious how they attached. One of the more popular systems is darts with foam heads and some kind of glue that heats up on impact to adhere.

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/StarC...

Looks like Starchase Guardian system

StarChase technology has been reviewed and approved by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

https://www.starchase.com/

Added:

Air powered, range of 10-40 ft. AR lower receiver for user familiarity. Tags use glue maybe? Tags are non-permanent and contain a proprietary attachment technology

>AR lower receiver for user familiarity

This wins the "most American thing I've read today" award.

> Tags use glue maybe?

Meh, I wouldn't trust it until I had an opportunity to see said glue for myself. Glues are usually terrible.

Also, not chasing people eliminates the need for high-speed chases. Simply show up at their house later.

You have to know who they are, where they live, and they have to be home for this to work.

Depends on what you mean by "work". If you mean they don't catch the person fleeing, well they don't catch them half the time anyway, a quarter of the time it ends in a collision.

https://www.chp.ca.gov/Documents/Police_Pursuits_SB_719_%202...

They will arrest less people and avoid endangering more bystanders.

My uncle was a sheriff for many years. He was always fond of saying: "You might outrun a cop, but you will never outrun the radio"

My dad said you can't outrun the helicopter

I grew up in rural Ohio, not so many helicopters there. But now I love in LA and find that very relatable.

Neat! The first time I saw one these "used" was in the original Ghost in the Shell from the 90s.

Also, Spider-Man uses Spider-Tracers, first depicted in 1964. That probably wasn’t the first time these were seen in fiction.

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_1_11

I'm cautious about new technology powers, but I like the idea of reducing the risks of high-speed chases.

I'd guess that they'll increasingly also be able to order the computers of modern/emerging vehicles to slow down and come to a safe stop.

And/or have swarms of multiple autonomous small camera drones. They can pursue a vehicle, and then split up when the occupants of a vehicle do, or split to cover exits of a structure that the suspects entered, or for redundancy if some drones are damaged, etc.

And fresh autonomous drones could be placed around the city, standing by, ready to join a pursuit (perhaps relieving drones with batteries spent by high-speed pursuit), or to respond automatically to gunshots, or to be deployed to a location immediately by 911 dispatchers, etc.

If you live somewhere that has problems with power being abused, some of the power will be becoming more powerful, so all the more reason to get abuse problems fixed now.

Step 1. Purchase 5 SDR's, Spoof GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, QZSS, BeiDou to show location as other side of the globe, middle of ocean, etc - run all 5 inside of car. Step 2. ?????? Step 3. Run from cops, keep going after they tag you and pull back, only to see your location as antarctica and realize they're not catching you Step 4. PROFIT

OTOH a lot of chases involve the suspect using several vehicles over the course of the chase. If they know cops break lose after darting, then they will steal another stolen car and ditch the current one with the dart. It seems like piloting a drone would be a lot easier and cheaper than chasing with cars, darts, or helicopters, since even if you are pursued by a helicopter, you can take a page out of Grand Theft Auto and wait under an overpass for your stars to go down:

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/authorities-pursue-vehicle-...

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/socal-police-chases...

If they know the dart's there, surely it's easier to just pull the dart off and throw it away than stealing another car.

It's probably faster to pull in front of someone and threaten them for their vehicle than to find wherever this dart is stuck.

I think you overestimate how difficult it could be to find the dart on a car.

I mean, it's probably on the back if that's where the cops were behind you.

Then just scrape or kick it off.

Wow, I see a new product idea for a price insensitive market... :-)

Possibly a way to work around United States v. Jones with some plausible deniability or parallel construction. "When we shot the car with the dart there was a crime taking place. We then tracked (for several days) using GPS until we were sure the accused was alone at home before making an arrest."

How long until some officer abuses it to track an ex?

> This eliminates the need for possible high-speed chases, worries about police jurisdiction issues, and any concerns about danger on the roads.

Though GPS jammers are a thing (my understanding is they are fairly simple to build but illegal), so this tactic could probably be defeated/exploited by a sophisticated criminal to get away.

If police did this to me, I’d just pull over somewhere, rip off the dart and put it on another car at a stoplight.

Two things:

1. You might not notice when the dart gets attached

2. Stopping to remove the dart while running the hell away obviously presents some risk to you

If they shoot a dart because they don’t plan to chase me right away it implies I’ll get some good distance before they catch up. I have maybe a few minutes.

It will also be obvious you have a dart if they suddenly decide to not chase you, now that it is a known technology.

And here I am trying to find a dog GPS collar that won't have the poor thing tip over.

Get an AirTag holder for a collar. Light and good enough. No need for a SIM card or huge battery.

GPS collars are used when you know, or expect to know, that your dog is within a such and such mile radius in a forest and you need help finding it recover it. They're for when you're out hunting or hiking with an offleash dog and it takes off after a prey item, and you lose sight of it.

Since AirTags rely on Bluetooth and the cooperation of other devices, they're not that useful in some of the situations where you want a GPS collar. If you're worried about a dog getting lost around people, something like an AirTag might be a good addition to your dog's microchip, though.

Correct! There are plenty of small Bluetooth collars and exactly zero smartphones out in the forest.

I assume the effectiveness of the tracking dart depends on the suspect not knowing it has been affixed to their vehicle. If they knew, wouldn’t they just pry it off?

Stupid Darts. It’s a Gallagher bit right? https://youtu.be/SLmIR6MOFiE

"Finally found a use for that Mateba of yours."

Then I suppose there’s no problem banning high-speed police changes, which present unreasonable risk to unrelated third parties for little clear benefit.

Seems like a decent solution if the goal is to recover the vehicle. Not such a great solution if the goal is to apprehend the driver/passengers…

My brother-in-law has a saying, "You can't outrun a radio!"

Well no, especially not if the radio is attached to your vehicle...

this is unlikely to catch on, as there is no addictive adrenalin rush and it will be very hard to prove who was driving the vehicle later.

You mean they can actually use the things in the Fast and the Furious!?!?!?!!

Don't the police need a warrant to attach a gps tracking device to a car?

Probable cause. :)

"There are times when police can perform a search without a warrant, and most searches actually do occur without warrants being issued.

If there is a reasonable expectation of privacy and there is not probable cause, a search warrant is required.

However, if probable cause does occur, such as a suspect runs away, a gunshot is heard from another room in a home, or even when an individual makes a sudden movement, a search becomes legal without a warrant."

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/know-your-rights-can-you-...

There are exceptions to warrantless searches and entry given probable cause, reasonable suspicion, and iminent public threat. If a guy is doing 120MPH down Santa Monica Boulevard after emptying a magazine at a Girl Scout who was out of Thin Mints, that's gonna check a whole lot of "the rules in this situation are relaxed" boxes.

> that's gonna check a whole lot of "the rules in this situation are relaxed" boxes.

Until the inevitable lawsuit.

What this doesn't address:

* The joyriding trend (example: "Kia Boys") made popular by tiktok. Some departments are seeing thefts go up 10-fold. These kids purposefully drive incredibly recklessly and at speeds that are easily lethal to them, other people in cars, motorcyclists, pedestrians, cyclists...even people nowhere near the road. These cars are being driven so fast that they'll get in a crash and go flying into people's houses, businesses, etc.

* Cases where the driver is unknown, or not known to a standard that would hold up to scrutiny in court. This is already a huge problem with a lot of hit-and-run cases in the US, because police might be able to prove a car was involved, but not who was behind the wheel. Stopping the driver/car eliminates that issue.

* Cases where the driver represents an active threat to public safety. People under the influence, having a psychotic break, are suicidal, or fleeing because they just committed a very serious crime such as deadly assault or homicide

I think this whole problem came about from the auto industry conditioning us to accept all the hazards of motor vehicles as somehow normal or different from, say, any other crime. Kill someone with a car? "Vehicular" homicide, which almost always carries lesser penalties than homicide by any other means? WTF.

If I wave a gun around in a crowded public area, I can expect to run a good chance of being shot to death by police.

But if I run from a traffic stop, barreling down the streets at twice or three times the speed limit, representing a lethal danger to everyone else on the road (and sidewalks, and inside businesses nowhere near the road...), it's somehow excessive force to immediately terminate that chase by any means necessary?

Even when we have extensive evidence that people fleeing from traffic stops are a massive danger to the public? Chase termination policies don't really help, do they? When plenty of idiots keep running to "put some distance on"?

I saw a video of UK cops chasing a teen in a stolen car, and it's clear he's going for an onramp to an expressway, the cop in the chase car declares over the radio that he's basically going to purposefully crash the kid's car off the road, because otherwise he's going to be a lethal danger. The kid goes for the onramp, and then ram him, hard, into the ditch, probably totaling the police car - but likely saving someone's life, possibly the kid himself.

I've also noticed that UK police are highly competent at using multiple vehicles to bring a suspect to a stop. Watching US police chases, it's a fucking clown show - you could play the benny hill music and it wouldn't feel out of place. US cops are comically incompetent at stopping a vehicle, even when they've got a dozen vehicles to do so with. Police in many countries will simply blockade a road, but I've never seen that done in the states, either....

I'm quite progressive on a huge number of social issues but if you run from police and operate your vehicle in a way that represents a lethal danger to the general public, police should treat it like they would any other lethal threat to public safety. IE terminate the chase, immediately. And I frankly don't give a shit about anything except minimizing danger to the public as quickly as possible

As an American I tend to think of European and British police as being less violent, because they are frequently not carrying firearms, but their tactics with vehicles are often much more violent than would be allowed in the US.

As an example, here's an NYT article from 5 years about about "tactical contact", which is used by the UK police to ram thieves on motorcycles and scooters: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/world/europe/uk-police-ra...

And here's a older Spanish video showing an extremely effective approach at stopping a fleeing motorcycle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LiyX-0YvfY.

As a generally law abiding citizen, this would make me feel safer around the police than the American approach with guns.

Or just read the license plate.

But no. Police like the chase. And the beating at the end.

There are plenty of problems with policing in America (and worldwide, for that matter), but this ignores the entire category of "crimes involving stolen vehicles."

If they can ditch the car then they're gonna be ditching the GPS dart with it.

Knowing where and when they ditched the car is still a massive advantage.

Most vehicles involved in chases are stolen. Those that aren't generally have removed or stolen plates.

In other words, reading the plates is the current practice, but usually yields little useful intel.

Or they could just let some people go. Police are obsessed with domination and not with safety.

And those they can’t, they can tag. Hence the article.

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