Some More News - Some More News: The Deadly, Avoidable Reality of High-Speed Police Chases

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Sources:

Hey, hey, hi, hi. Sorry, I saw that new Mad Max and got so pumped about car chases that I jumped my Porsche over the Hollywood sign. Sorry, correction, I banged my Subaru on a curb at the mall. But I'm just out of juice now. I'm juiced out. I need something that'll rejuice me up.

Something that'll get me all juicy and loosey. A juicy loosey! No, this is the one and only time eating beef stuffed with cheese isn't the solution. Okay, I know. I'll watch that cable TV all the kids are talking about. Maybe there's something exciting on. Some sort of cool, exciting car chase like in Mad Max.

Everyone, stay right here and be aware that this next clip and various clips in this video portray vehicular violence which may be hard to watch. So be aware, we're very serious. This is a legitimate content warning for those who might be upset by these images. Okay, warning over, time to juice. Driver door is open, oh my gosh, no, oh sorry.

The video is difficult to watch. News Chopper 4 overhead when Torrance police hits the fleeing driver with their patrol SUV, causing the car to swing around and slam into a woman walking in a crosswalk, knocking her to the ground. Yeah, that got me juiced, seeing that old lady getting hit by a car.

She's fine, by the way. I mean, no, she isn't, but she's alive. You may remember this video from earlier this year. It shows the Torrance, California Police Department pursuing a stolen Toyota Prius and ramming the vehicle off the road and into 66 year old Maria Salazar. Last we checked, the woman was pursuing legal action

against the Torrance PD, who perhaps did not need to do that. Just throwing this out, but a lot of Priuses come with an option where you can track a stolen vehicle. Just saying. Also, there's video of it, so keep following them with the camera instead of the smashy car.

But hey, it's just one isolated incident that I'm sure isn't a part of some larger systemic issue we're about to devote an entire episode to. Right now. The high speed problem of police chases. Very well. If I can't be juiced by the hip new offerings of cable television, may I be juiced by my regular and increasing volatile rage

against policing in this country. It's a bitter juice best mixed with vodka. You know, it's kind of funny how despite videos like the one we just saw, America seems to still love car chases, if not real ones, then at least on film. We love it, myself included. We love the premise of a renegade cop

getting the evil terrorist or drug dealer in films like Bad Boys, Bad Boys 2, Lethal Weapon, Lethal Weapon 2, Lethal Weapon 3, Lethal Weapon 4, Loaded Weapon 1, Bad Boys 3, Bad Boys 4 Life, and Bad Boys Ride or Die in theaters now. Boy, I hope they crack wise in that film, which based on the trailers is about our two renegade cops getting revenge for the death of their boss. We love revenge for stuff and things.

The fantasy of chasing someone and or being chased gives us a rush. Car chases in movies are objectively pretty cool. But here's some more news. In real life, police chases are a big unnecessary and destructive problem. And if you've seen this show, or just looked at what police do,

you may not be shocked to hear that most of the destruction and harm done from police pursuits are caused by the police themselves. Of course it is. A report from USA Today showed that police car chases resulted in 11,506 deaths from 1979 to 2013. Of those deaths, 6,301 were the suspects and 139 deaths were the police themselves,

which means, thanks to the power of math, 5,066 of those deaths were just bystanders and passengers. But good news! To be fair and balanced and keeping our hands at 10 and 2, this data isn't really accurate. It is, in fact, likely way worse. One person dies every day. By the end of today, someone's gonna die. Jeff Elpert is a leading expert on police pursuits. The University of South Carolina criminologist calls the available police pursuit death data

collected by the federal government incomplete. Oh yay, what a cool system. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or NHTSA if you're NASHTAY, is tasked to keep records and statistics regarding police pursuit deaths. But their numbers are likely inaccurate and under-reported because individual police agencies can choose

what to report and how to report such incidents to the federal government. So that USA Today report might actually be underselling this already large problem. While the NHTSA numbers are under scrutiny, there are other reports from investigators that have smushed together data collected from the NHTSA, private research organizations, and state agencies.

The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, found that 3,336 people were killed as a result of a police pursuit from 2017 through 2022. In fact, nearly two people per day were killed as a result of a police pursuit from 2017 through 2022. In fact, nearly two people per day were killed in 2020 and 2021. And again, these horrifying numbers are still likely inaccurate as the only federal database for these police pursuit reports

is under counting these incidents. For example, the NHTSA reported 545 and 525 police pursuit related deaths in 2020 and 2021, which were both record highs. However, the Chronicles investigation showed those highs were even higher with nearly 700 people dying from police chases in both of those years. This wide discrepancy in numbers is either due

to flat out underreporting by the local police or the NHTSA narrowing the definition of police chase by omitting instances when an officer intentionally rams into a vehicle, more on that later, or when a police officer calls off a chase just before a crash. So this incident in Alabama in 2022, in which a car being chased by mobile police officers

crashed, injuring two people and killing one teen passenger would not have been counted since the crash happened at most 45 seconds after the police sergeant called off the chase. Really, a teenager died and that doesn't count toward the statistics because the cop in charge decided to rage quit like a five-year-old cheating at tag. Ram, you're it, no crash backsies.

It should be noted that these fatality stats greatly change depending on the state you live in. For example, you're 10 times more likely to die in a police chase in Georgia than in Rhode Island or Vermont. Georgia and Alabama account for 10% of all police pursuit deaths recorded, despite making up only 5% of the overall US population. Meanwhile, between 2018 and 2022, police chases in Houston, Texas left 740 people injured and 27

dead, with 240 of them being innocent bystanders. In Michigan, there were 133 fatal crashes caused by police chases from 2005 through 2014, killing 150 people and another 60 people killed from 2017 to 2021. Between 2017 and 2022, police pursuits in Minnesota caused 54 deaths, with nearly half of them being bystanders. You can compare this to states like Hawaii,

where there were only five police chase related deaths in a 20 year period from 1997 to 2017. So why such a stark difference? The reason for this is not a mystery. It's not because of a curse or the birthday wish of some fucked up little kid. No, the reason for all of this varied data is the Arbor Day wish of a fucked up little kid.

That's no, that's obviously not. No, it's because our country doesn't have federal laws to govern police chases or even any rules of engagement into how police enact a pursuit. Hell, many police departments don't have state or local laws to provide boundaries in how a police chase is carried out, leaving it up to the cops themselves to determine when and how to initiate a pursuit.

And whenever there are certain policies in place, such as for city police, well, those policies could conflict with the state police. And so a lot of cops are left to just wing it. Do we have a clip? Are you the only one in the vehicle? Yes. Okay. I'm pregnant.

Well ma'am, you've got to pull over when we stop. I had my flashers on. It doesn't matter ma'am. Oh cool stuff. That clip you just watched was an Arkansas State Trooper Vin Dieseling a pregnant woman off the road for going, no joke, 14 miles over the speed limit. As you can see in the dash cam footage we showed, the pregnant driver, Janice Nicole Harper,

clearly had her lights blinking and was looking for a spot to pull over. But because she was, I guess, too slow or something, the cop performed a precision immobilization technique, or pit maneuver, way more safe than just waiting. I mean, to be fair, maybe the cop really wanted to try and ram someone off the road, thus blocking traffic and causing an infinitely worse problem

than a person speeding. But hey, at least he did a precision technique as evidenced by the unpredictable damage. The pit maneuver is a common and pretty vague technique you've seen in basically every police chase, including that first one we showed you where the car hit the old lady. I guess it's just anytime a cop car slams into another car,

they can just call it a maneuver. The results being... Well... That sent the vehicle spinning. It flipped over several times and landed down an embankment. ["Suspect's Car Crashed into a Pit Manoeuvre"] The state trooper crashed into the suspect's car in what appears to be a pit maneuver, causing the suspect to crash into the ditch and die.

Yeah, you know it's precise when it flings the car into the guardrail and kills someone. Here's one where they flip the car onto the sidewalk. I see him, but... Jay told us the guy made a run for it? Here's one where the cop car flies into a light post and crushes the driver. Very precise stuff. Just like in the name! This pit maneuver was reportedly based on a German federal police technique,

then was further developed and modified in the United States. In 1985, the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia developed the version we see today, which has been adopted by most police departments throughout the country. Now this maneuver can be done safely, in theory, if the path is clear of other cars, pedestrians,

and other crashables, and if done at low speeds, which is why some police departments have detailed procedures of when and how the pit can be executed, along with boundaries, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department and LAPD limiting pits to chases under 35 miles per hour. Other departments in other states may also have certain limits, often related to speed.

There are even state police departments like in Oregon and Wisconsin, that consider any pit maneuver done above 35 miles per hour as deadly force. But it's kind of weird this varies state to state. Like physics doesn't change state to state, right? So why would this? And so it's no surprise that many other police departments

like the Georgia State Patrol have absolutely no rules in place and just put the use of the pit maneuver at the discretion of the officers. You may notice that Georgia was one of the states with the highest fatality rates for police chases. According to one report, Georgia state patrol cops have executed more than 1,500 pit maneuvers since 1997, leading to the deaths of at least 34 people as of 2020.

You can draw a direct line from the loosening of limitations to the deaths of individuals. For example, remember how Hawaii had only five police chase deaths in 20 years? Well, since then, they had four deaths in a five-year period, which happens to coincide with the Honolulu PD loosening their policies around what justifies a police pursuit. Over in the state of Arkansas, last year, they made it a felony to flee the cops while speeding,

in turn giving cops permission to start a pursuit. This change resulted in a 53% increase in car chases from the previous years, which also made 2023 a record year for tactical vehicle interventions in the state. Pit maneuvers had already been quadrupling even before this change, which might explain why a cop did it

to that pregnant lady in 2020. And so in 2023 alone, six people died from these car chases, the most in seven years. Heck, here's one where an Arkansas cop performs a pit maneuver on the wrong car. He's out, he's out, he hit in the water, he's in the water. Precision immobilization technique.

Meanwhile, Texas not only implements the pit maneuver, but also experienced an uptick in deadly police chases due in part to Governor Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star. Operation Lone Star is a set of border security measures shit kicked by Abbott in March, 2021, with the aim to stop quote, the smuggling of people and drugs into Texas. This has led to 74 people being killed

from the 49 high speed police pursuits between when Operation Lone Star was first enacted and July, 2023. That's more deaths than actual chases. Can't smuggle people if those people are dead, I guess. You got them. Operation Lone Star empowered Texas police even further, causing a rise in police pursuits in at least 60 counties

since it was initiated. And as you have probably guessed, increased racial profiling. Even before Operation Lone Star was thought up by Abby Dabbit, police chases in Texas resulted in 377 deaths from 2017 to 2021. Seems like a bad state. Much like all the other states. It's also very, very, very interesting

that out of the top 20 states that have the highest rate of police car chase related deaths, 18 of them are led by GOP lawmakers. These states have given more and more power to police over the years with less and less oversight and rules in place to determine whether or not to initiate a chase. It's almost like, stick with me now,

it's almost like the more power you give to the police, the less safe people are. And by extension, the people doing that the most are members of the Republican party. But it would be silly to pretend like this is a partisan problem. Democrats love to pull this shit too. They just pretend to not like it.

So this is an America problem. After all, as I pointed out, we absolutely love car chases, not just in film. Most of those clips I've shown are quite popular on YouTube. That timeline most viewed graph spiking exactly where the accident occurs. And so after the break, we're gonna talk about why and how we got here.

Here being our love of car chases, not here as in us existing because we know how that happened. Your dad's penis, mom's vagina, combine. Neighbor was there too. One in five Americans have learned a new language on their bucket list. Did you know that the phrase bucket list

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Welcome back, me. Me, we're talking about police car chases and how they are pretty bad. You know, the way most things cops do are bad. And up until this point in the show, a show specifically about car chases, you might notice that we've mostly omitted a fairly large participant in this subject.

That would be, of course, the LAPD. Los Angeles is famously known for high-speed pursuits. You might even hear them in the background of this show all the time. We love them here is the point. You can't tell, but I'm engaged in a car chase right now. In a five-year span ending in 2023, LA saw 4,203 police chases, about a fourth of those resulting in injury or death. That includes 496 injuries and nine deaths of people who were completely uninvolved in the chase. Nine dead people who were just minding their own business,

just getting some in and out or thinking about how they should bring back the arc light killed, killed like the arc light, because we just can't stop doing car chases. And it's not hard to know why if you've ever lived or visited. Los Angeles is both a densely populated city and sprawl of roadways begging to be fasted and furious on. And wouldn't you know it, L.A. is also where the entire history of car chases in America begins.

It was the first city to introduce speed limits in 1904. And just one year later, we got our first high-profile chase. In February 1905, a plow manufacturer and millionaire, M.T. Hancock, who was an actual person and a fake rich person we made up, broke new ground. Not with one of his best-selling plows, but when he had his chauffeur speed up to 60 miles per hour through downtown Los Angeles. To be clear, this guy didn't invent car chases. Cops were chasing people long before this, but this is likely the earliest high profile case you can find, and of course, not the last.

Here's a 1906 newspaper article from St. Louis describing a high speed 25 miles per hour chase. Heavens! Done by a police skidoodle wagon, as they were called, fucking apparently. Leave it to the press to make the cop sound cute and harmless. This chase actually kinda ended in a quaint little pit maneuver too, with the cop using his newer and faster machine to outpace the speeding offender.

This was of course the start of a forever pattern. When the public got a faster car, the police would upgrade to keep or overtake the pace. But cars didn't just get faster due to manufacturers making them that way. We can thank booze for that. During prohibition from 1920 to 1933, bootleggers had to run moonshine without getting caught.

And that meant building faster cars. Well, you have to change the engine, build it up a little, get your right gears, right tires, several little secrets. Fun fact, you are required by law to add folksy bluegrass music to any video made about moonshining. So it turns out that bootleggers

used to regularly trick out their cars, not only to make them faster, but to add evasion gadgets like, no joke, oil slicks and smoke screens. Because apparently car chases used to fucking rock like a twisted metal level. But of course, as the bootleggers escalated their tactics, so did the cops.

Law enforcement began developing tactics to incapacitate vehicles from the spiked strips that have been used since the 1940s to the pit maneuver we mentioned. Eventually these bootleggers even began to compare and race their cars. And in doing so, notice that people would pay to watch them. One such driver put together an organization

to standardize racing rules in Daytona Beach called the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing or NAFSCAR. They should lose one of the letters. NAFSCAR, NAFSCAD, NAF- And I bring up NAFSCAR because it represents America's desire to watch people cream themselves into pink oblivion whilst driving at high speeds.

And so one of the core reasons we love police chases was a spectator sport literally birthed from police chases. And this fascination of course reached its peak during the 1980s and 1990s. You know the one. Again, all this is presumption now. It's apparent that the police believe it. Well, it's not great.

And that is Cowling's car, and that Simpson is in the driver's seat. We've received a report of a gun in the car. The car is heading north, which would be toward Los Angeles. R.I.P. But it wasn't just Nordberg. Several years prior, one of the most notorious California chases covered was a four- long, 300 mile police pursuit that had viewers so enthralled that when one station tried to swap away to their original programming, they actually got angry phone calls from viewers wanting to see it play out.

And it would play out, mind you, with a good Samaritan dying and the suspect getting shot by police. So yay. Since then, news coverage got more and more into covering police chases live because of the potential boost in ratings, overly sensationalizing this extremely

unsensational scenario. Like that OJ chase footage, the person who shot that, who of course spent her career filming a lot of chases, would eventually go on to regret it, claiming that it has ultimately harmed local news coverage. There's just this weird disconnect, both in the 90s and now, between our cultural love of the chases and the horrifying reality of them. The 70s and 80s and 90s, big time for action movies filled with grand police chases.

We loved it! To see the cops chase down the bad guy and drag him out of his car. To watch these actual chases live on TV, never thinking too much about the reality or end result. Like, we seem to forget that the Rodney King beating was the end of a police chase. Those cops no doubt packed to the gills with adrenaline and racism, which dare I say is not a great cocktail, unlike rage and vodka. I think that when some people look at these chases, they just kind of assume that the person involved

did something to deserve it. And that's certainly how the cops frame these chases and tactics too. In response to one of the clips we showed earlier when a suspect died, the Arkansas State Police Director, Mike Hagar, was quoted saying, We don't want anyone to be killed, but at the end of the day, we are always going to maintain that

clear priority of life, which is the innocent public, then the law enforcement, then the suspects. This is the standard response you get. Here's another, more telling quote, also from Mike Hagar, about a completely different chase saying, quote, the suspect assumed that risk when he made that conscious act. Okay, see the suspect asked for it. They wouldn't be a suspect if they didn't do anything wrong. Just ask that pregnant lady.

Yeah, you know where we're going with this. Remember the data from that USA Today article we cited earlier? 8% of those recorded incidents were the police chasing folks for misdemeanors. 19% were for non-violent crimes, and a motherfucking 62% of those police chases were caused by traffic offenses. And so here's our third and most telling Mike

Agar quote, quote, we are very intentional about training troopers to use pit to end a pursuit quickly to protect the lives and property of the citizens of Arkansas. Property. The police are justifying the deaths of citizens as being necessary and their fault because they might hurt property. You know, the things cops actually exist to protect. Those 740 people who were injured and the 27 folks who died in Houston during police chases between 2018 and 2022, over 50% of those chases were caused by a traffic violation.

Minnesota, half of the 2,800 or so police pursuits in the state in 2022 were for, you guessed it, traffic violations. And only 6% of those chases were for suspected felonies. A 2023 report from the LAPD stated an average of 98 bystander injuries per year from police pursuits, in which 44% of those chases were to catch car thieves. Operation Lone Star, even if you believed it would be effective at stopping drug smugglers and human traffickers, spoiler, it doesn't, 81% of all of police pursuits in Operation Lone Star counties from March, 2021

to July, 2023 were initiated by a traffic violation, with 97% of those being misdemeanors such as speeding or not obeying a traffic signal. Nine. Seven. Missing a traffic signal. Escalated to a fucking police chase. This pattern is across the board for these stats. Innocent lives are lost because police are pursuing extremely minor violations. Like that San Francisco Chronicle article we mentioned way earlier,

upon further investigation by the Chronicle's reporters, it was found that out of a subset of 2,000 of those reported deaths, a quarter of them were innocent bystanders. And that the vast majority of those reported deaths, a quarter of them were innocent bystanders. And that the vast majority of those pursuits were the police chasing down traffic violators, shoplifters, and other nonviolent criminals. A quarter, a quarter of deaths

were people just standing there because of things like shoplifting. In other words, people aren't dying because of some grand theft like that EMP device in the Fate of the Furious, but rather some grand theft like that EMP device in the fate of the furious, but rather some petty crime like the DVD players in the Fast and the Furious. Great job.

I joined my fingers and I kissed their tips. To all you dead bystanders watching this, rest assured you were killed to ensure asset protection for our wealthiest citizens. May you become a chauffeur in Valhalla. What makes this so insidious is that because of these extremely broad reasons to ram someone off the road,

it's way harder to know when a cop has screwed up by just watching police chases. After all, a pit maneuver could, in theory, be justified if the suspect is like, I don't know, in the middle of a spree killing or doing a 9-11 sequel. Nine, 12. 9-11-2, whatever.

It's harder to look at a video of a police chase and determine if that force was necessary compared to say, a cop shooting a kid in the back. This is also why it can be somewhat forgivable, or at least mildly understandable, for someone to get caught up in the coolness of a chase. When you're watching it live, you often have no idea if the suspect is an immediate threat,

even though statistically they are not. Even when it's something like a warrant for their arrest, we have no idea what that warrant is for. It could be nothing. And so ultimately, unless it's something really obvious, like that old woman being hit, car chases don't tend to invoke the outrage they probably should.

I imagine that's part of why cops love doing them so much. They get less shit for it. That relates to the other reason cops love doing these chases, which is the same reason a lot of people like watching them. Because they're fun. According to Tim Dees, a former police officer, trainer, and current columnist,

cops generally want to pursue. There's no getting around the fact that it's really cool and it's fun and it's exhilarating. Cops want to catch the bad guys. That's what drives them. They're reason for being, and they don't like having this authority or this tool taken away from them.

And when they're told by their department not to pursue, at that point, the cops, rightfully or otherwise, believe the bad guys are laughing at them. We did a whole video about police training and how it's fucked up and centered around cops being told that they are superhero messengers of God. And while I'm not gonna sit here on my throne of skulls and act like racism isn't a factor,

it can't be ignored that a lot of police misconduct simply comes from them thinking they're in a movie. Like, hey, remember this? Shot fired! Shot fired! Shot fired! Shot fired! That's the cop who thought an acorn dropping was the next World War. And while there are a lot of terrifying and embarrassing moments in that clip, one of

the more telling is his stupid little Dwight Schrute double barrel roll right before unloading at a civilian. Maybe I'm wrong, but I do not believe that to be a wise tactical move. And even more telling than that is the moment where the cop does this. Those are like South Park noises. So the cop says what to his partner, who by the way, also started shooting wildly without actually seeing a target. And then our hero cop yells out that he's been shot

or as he put it, I've been hit and starts acting like he's dying or something. He's literally just playing out a cops and robbers game the way a child would. And it's just very pathetically clear he's doing stuff he's seen in action movies, including a dramatic death scene. Just a grown adult with a real gun and badge, larping around on public streets. And now imagine that guy in a car. A car where he is allowed, if not encouraged, to get into high-speed chases, and then add, I don't know,

around 800,000 more people like that. People who, like all of us, watched those action movies about renegade cops chasing down their man to get revenge for the death of their partner. But the reality of that archetype is a person like NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell, who, in the first three months after getting his job,

led an unofficial enforcement push that increased police vehicle pursuits by nearly 600% from the previous year. 600 damn percent. I should be clear that there was no official change in policy or guidelines. And even one NYPD official called this push, quote, "'Reckless shit.

Jon Chell was going rogue, pushing his officers to chase down more cars, a renegade cop, if you will. And what was this renegade cop getting revenge for? Well, one guess is that in the year right before Chell got his position, he was hit and injured by an ATV that fled the scene. That's right, NYPD Chief of Patrol, John Chell instructed the cops under him to increase the amount of vehicle pursuits,

an extremely dangerous policy that no one instructed him to carry out, likely because he was mad that an ATV hit him. Their children, petty children with cars and guns and dumb hats. But hey, at least, at least, if an innocent bystander is hurt in one of these chases, they can sue the city and get rich. At least. It's a very common comment under any video of a citizen getting hit by a cop car. The final comfort we tell ourselves when faced with police misconduct, at least they get paid, right?

Right? Right? That old lady who was hit, she's gonna be a millionaire. Right? Yeah, so I got an idea. Let's go to our final ad, and when we come back, we'll talk about just that. What do you get if you are hit by a cop car?

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And before the break, we were discussing how cops are allowed to ram your vehicle for even the slightest infraction, often risking your life and the lives of innocent bystanders. And the final desperate straw of hope we were grasping at was the idea that if you happen to be wrongfully injured during a police chase, you'd at least be compensated for it, right?

What is that compensation? A million dollars? Free crime for one day? It's gotta be something, right? Are you ready for the answer? Because the answer is nothing. Or next to nothing at best. See, we have a thing here, thanks to the Supreme Court,

called qualified immunity. It protects police officers from being sued by citizens for stuff like injuries or violating constitutional rights. I guess in theory, it's so cops can do their jobs without fear of retribution. But I would argue that it's kinda odd that police couldn't do their jobs without violating your rights.

That's like if subway workers needed qualified immunity from dipping their balls in the lettuce. But thanks to this immunity, if a cop car hits you or someone you love, it's near impossible to hold them accountable. You'll have to file a report, complaint, and likely a lawsuit to the city to get some monetary compensation. And even then, you'll be given a lawsuit to the city to get some monetary compensation.

And even then, you'll be given a series of hoops to jump through. The city of Houston, for example, is very good at this. Their civil lawyers will do anything to delay your case from getting into court, hoping that you'll get too frustrated and disheartened to continue. Even if you did get your day in court, those same lawyers will argue that those injuries

you suffered were your fault or that your loved one's death was due to pre-existing injuries or acts of God. It's not too different in Arkansas where the only time you can collect from the state is when your property or car is damaged, but only if you have car insurance and you can only get up to $25,000.

The word gaslight often comes to mind. In Missouri, if you are hurt by someone being chased by the cops, the state Supreme Court has made it so that you can't blame the cops for that. Why? Well, according to a 1999 ruling, plaintiffs can't prove that the chased suspect wouldn't have hit them if the cops weren't there. Like in an alternate reality, I guess? That is some pre-crime Asimov hogwash right there.

That means the cops could chase a suspect, accidentally herd them to a school zone, and not take even some responsibility if that driver hit a bunch of kids. They shouldn't have been born if they didn't wanna be killed. Settlements only seem to occur when a pursuing officer kills an innocent bystander directly

or if the event is really overt, such as when it's caught on video. That pregnant lady, for example, is one of the few people who actually got a settlement after suing the police. This settlement included a policy change regarding the pit maneuver, which is cool. Though the change itself is simply

that cops shouldn't do pit maneuvers unless they think all other tactics have been unsuccessfully attempted. So it seems like personal discretion, they won't actually change what cops do in those situations, but it's still good. And all she had to do is be on camera and pregnant. So to recap, there are no federal regulations

for police chases. And in some states, cops can ram your car at any speeds, even lethal ones. They can do this for a variety of reasons, including basic traffic violations and shoplifting. And in fact, that's usually what causes these chases. They result in the deaths of cops, suspects, and completely innocent bystanders. And we as a society generally encourage these to happen,

or at least enjoy them when they make the news. And to top it off, the victims of these police chases very often get no compensation for the mistakes of the police officers. So, hey, here's a question. Why do we like even have police chases? No, really, why? Hey, hey, hey, hey. Why? Hey, did you notice something

about all the police chase videos we've shown? They were all videos, often from helicopters that can safely follow from the sky. If someone runs a red light or is caught speeding, why do cops need to chase and pull them over right then? Those dash cam videos capture their license plates after all. That's how we're able to mail tickets to people. Remember how we can just mail tickets to people?

Because cops know our addresses and can match them to our license plates? Remember license plates? If you're speeding and a cop sees you, why do they have to pull you over to hand you a ticket that can be mailed? We love automating jobs, so why not this one too? It's easy. You don't even need a cop. After all, remember how we like live in a surveillance state? Remember that? Remember the surveillance state? I'm not saying that's good, but what's the point of having an Orwellian system of traffic cameras and drones and following helicopters and databases if we're not using them? Like, I get having to pursue if there's an immediate threat,

like a dangerous driver or a violent crime in progress. But as we keep saying, that's usually not the case. So unless it's one of those things I just said, why are cops allowed to chase people at all? If you think it's a good deterrent, well, that's not true either. Here's a 2023 Department of Justice report that showed decreasing police pursuits

did not cause an increase in crime. Aside from the fact that cops like to do them, there's no good reason for them. After all, I'm sure garbage collectors would also like to run people off the road, but we don't let them because they don't need to. And cops also don't need to. So maybe it should be against the law for a cop to pursue a vehicle

unless they're stopping a violent crime in progress. And I know what you're thinking, cops will just say that's what they thought they were doing. So damn actually, you're right, that's a good point. That is, that is a pickle. Okay, new idea. Maybe cops shouldn't have cars. Okay, new idea. Maybe cops shouldn't have cars. No cars. They're done with cars. How would they get around instead? Well, hear me out.

From guiding traffic to crowd control, getting around on horseback has its advantages. When you're on the horse, the public tends to come to you and talk to you, and they approach you. Hear me out. First of all, they call these mounted units, which is just a fancy term for a wall dildo.

So that's a plus. Currently, horse cops are often used to guide traffic or bust up protests, which boo. But what if instead of beating up protesters, we just gave all the patrol and highway cops horses instead? For starters, horses have had it too easy in this country. All right, it's time for them to contribute something. Secondly, if your car is successfully chased

and rammed off the road by a horse cop, then that horse earned it. Give him all the oats. But most likely the cops will have to accept tactics that don't involve flipping the car of a pregnant woman. And we can still make this look cool for them? Ever seen True Lies? That was some solid horse action.

Amazing! Or Cowboys Are Neat? Strap cameras on the horses and you can have cool hackers back at HQ doing license plate stuff. Spy stuff is cool? We can make this work. You might think I'm joking, and I kind of am, but statistically, I think replacing every cop car with a dumb fuck horse would save more lives

than what we currently have. Seriously, that would probably reduce deaths. And boy, that shouldn't be true, but it might be. And that should concern us. So yeah, fuck it. If they can't handle cars, horse them. Horse them all. I mean, heck, perhaps giving cops an animal

they have to depend on and nurture would be good for them. And if they're really good, they can get a bicycle. Maybe we'll talk about it at dinner. This is a good plan, I think. So I'm gonna watch something, but you can stay here if you want. We're just gonna chill out and watch something nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing oh wait this is the magic remote that lets me see what it's like if there was no

Christmas so or it's the fan remote I'm not sure which. Oh, it's just a stupid looking phone. Hello? Yes, I am available for whatever it is you're calling me about. Oh you want to like and subscribe? Wrong number! But you can like and subscribe? Wrong number! But you can like and subscribe, that would really help us out. Leave a comment and such and so on and so forth. We've got a patreon.com slash some more news.

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where the podcasts are. Bye.