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There are three major sets of modification that I can think of which are done to a cruiser:

- Light bars/electronics/sirens

- Armoring

- Ability to detain suspects

The first is going to be required for every police or sheriff cruiser.

The second will reduce casualties (arguably for both sides) in an armed engagement. Ideally required for any action which could create an armed engagement. Because a minimum of one side is always armed, every encounter can become an armed engagement. Huzzah USA etc. etc.

The third is required if the police officer will ever respond to anything that isn't giving out a parking ticket. Traffic stops can include anything from an armed engagement down to a drunk driver or peaceful execution of an outstanding warrant. Then there's simple responding to calls, which can also include all of the above.

The lack of ability to detain someone means you need (as stated in the article) more officers responding to an engagement.

Light bars, cameras, comms equipment. The traffic enforcement cars need those. Not so much the armor and detainment capabilities.

If it’s known they don’t pursue and aren’t likely to attack you to secure an arrest, the risk for them from the person they’re stopping (traffic on the e.g. highway they’re standing next to is another matter) in an encounter is a ton lower. Why fight them when you can just leave? And rack up another charge, sure, but one a hell of a lot less serious than attacking someone and then still fleeing.

It does mean calling in a regular cop for arrests, but what proportion of stops result in arrests in a day? They also have to call in tow trucks and ambulances and fire trucks.

> If it’s known they don’t pursue and aren’t likely to attack you to secure an arrest, the risk for them from the person they’re stopping

If this is true and not just an assumption (FWIW, I think you're wrong - human nature is not that logical when in fight or flight brain) it should be possible to come up with numbers to back this up. There are many locations in the US where the default is not to chase.

As a side note, they have to detain someone while waiting. That someone's care is also legally in their hands at that point; it doesn't make a lot of sense from a civilian safety perspective to just set them on the side of the highway.

>A largish proportion of cop traffic enforcement & safety activity ends in a tow, but we don’t expect traffic enforcement cops to drive tow trucks.

These are clearly disanalogous. You can leave a car waiting for a tow truck; it's not going to drive off on its own. But you can't just leave a suspect waiting to be arrested unless they're restrained (in which case, you've already done the hard part of arresting them).

Ambulances, fire trucks. We already expect them to call for help in a significant minority of stops and traffic safety actions, including for many where they remain while waiting for the help.

So the answer is less/no chases and more raids?

I totally agree that the majority of folks don't flee and wouldn't flee, but the folks that do, they're the main dangers we want to catch anyway.

I struggle to agree with the concept that raids ate better than chases.

I don’t think you’ll find that most chases are over issues that warrant turning it into a situation involving significant risk of serious injury or death for both those involved (which may include passengers in the fleeing car) and bystanders.

I completely understand, however, if they don't chase and it's not enough to try to catch the person in their house/work/whatever, it's practically the same as the law not being enforced, right?

I struggle to think it's fair to people that don't run if they're held responsible but people that run aren't.

How many deaths is this effort at fairness worth? I think enough would be caught by passive/invisible surveillance (drone tracking and other methods—these are already used) and simply following up at home or work that we’re not talking about some kind of get-away-free card, here. This also assumes a very-high rate of apprehension from chases, which does not seem to be the case (possibly under 50% when relatively-loose chase policies are in place—rates of apprehension, though not total apprehensions, appear to trend much higher with more-restrictive chase policies, as one might expect)

There have been some places that have either restricted or loosened restrictions on police chases over the last couple decades, which should give us an excellent data set to see the effects of these policies… unfortunately, police data gathering and sharing is notoriously awful, with the result that most attempts at analyzing the statistics of policing in the US are necessarily full of guesswork.

Just to be clear, I'm completely for restricted, even levels that could be considered highly restricted, chases. I'm just not sure that I'm okay with completely eliminating chases entirely.

I also worry that expanding "passive/invisible surveillance (drone tracking and other methods—these are already used)" is a net loss for citizens, however, I struggle on how to quantify that loss compared to the cost of accidents.