Why does the police have to chase anyway? Why can't they just identify the car and silently follow it until it stops. Damn it.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/01/23/060123fa_fact_fr...
I haven't read it since it came out in 2006, but suffice it to say that the Los Angeles area has vastly more police chases per capita than the rest of the United States, and therefore if something like this was going to happen it's statistically unsurprising that it happened near LA.
From that article: "In 2004, California led the nation with 7,321 pursuits, and the majority of them-5,596-took place in L.A. County". Google cites approximately 10 million population for LA County and 38 million for California, so if my math is right that's roughly 56 car chases per 100,000 population in LA County versus 6 per 100,000 in the rest of the state. (Population figures are 2011 for LA County, 2012 for California, versus 2004 for the chase stats, but it should be pretty close.)
That doesn't answer why the police chase, because obviously it's done far less elsewhere, though it does happen. In Austin, Texas, my wife was overtaken on the highway by a car being chased by the police, and in order to avoid getting rear-ended by the chasee who was going very fast she side-swiped the vehicle next to her and substantial damage was done. Some day if that criminal strikes it rich she's theoretically got victim's compensation due to her. We're not holding our breath. They ended up catching the guy on foot after he exited the highway.
From the article:
> The L.A. freeways are its public stage, its Colosseum. Pursuits are L.A.'s ultimate reality show,
I'm not some scholar on Los Angeles, but it really seems to be part of the culture there to watch car chases, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is positive feedback encouraging criminals to get their 15 minutes of fame.
After all, if you've just held up a 7-11 or something and you didn't get away cleanly, why not have a little fun before you get thrown in jail, possibly for the rest of your life ?
I'd suggest trying to correlate average vehicular speed with frequency of car chases. My guess is that certain cities are built for high-speed car transit and thus lend themselves towards this kind of thing.
You can search for "[name of city] police general order pursuit", or some variant thereof, to get the policy for your local district.
I watched a 25 year old woman die on the pavement at 16th and Dolores in San Francisco, hit by a car running a red light, being chased by cops. Apparently the car had been reported stolen.
Not a worthy mission, in my opinion.
Note: of course it's the chasee's fault. But cops know exactly what happens in these situations, and cannot be excused.
Even if it is scary, I think it's possible that some officers won't back down from a chase. And this involved a chase of someone believed to be a public menace.
(Sorry, not justifying the actual chase. Just pointing out that it's not strange that it occurred, given the status quo there)
The number of fictional car chases in LA is also ridiculous. One was filmed on the block where I grew up, and I'm sure we weren't unusual in that.