PICKENS, S.C. (WIS) – Once a police chase starts, it’s often over within minutes. Within those minutes, lives can be changed forever.
A recent report from the U.S. Department of Justice recommends officers should only chase when necessary, because of the risk pursuits pose to the public.
Deaths and injuries related to pursuits are on the rise, according to national data cited in the report. At least 30% of the time when law enforcement chases, there’s a crash.
Technology companies are offering an alternative to high-speed pursuits to combat the rising number of deaths and injuries related to these chases.
One of those chases happened New Years Eve in 2022 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and took the lives of Caroline Gill and Maggie Dunn.
A police officer hit and killed the two girls while speeding through an intersection. Officials say he was trying to catch up to a pursuit to catch a man accused of breaking into a home and stealing a car.
Dunn’s brother Liam, who was sitting in the back seat during the crash, was also seriously injured.
“It’s just a nightmare that you haven’t woken up from,” said Jennifer Perkins, the girls’ cheerleading coach, according to WAFB. “It seems unreal every day, like this cannot be happening here. They’re two wonderful girls and the fact that we will never see their smiling faces again on the squad is just devastating.”
The officer involved in the case was indicted on two counts of manslaughter, aggravated obstruction of a highway, negligent injury, malfeasance in office, and reckless operation of a vehicle.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 32 years with 22 years suspended. In addition, he will have to spend 10 years in hard labor and then three years on probation.
Because of incidents like this one, some in the law enforcement community are hoping to change attitudes toward pursuits.
Tim Morgan was in law enforcement for 37 years, and spent 22 of those years as the Chief Deputy at the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office. A crash that happened in 2008 changed his perspective on chases.
“We had an officer pursuing a car. I think it lasted around three minutes, and ended up hitting and killing an innocent young man,” he said.
Morgan said of everything he dealt with in his career, that deadly pursuit troubled him more than anything.
“Even though I wasn’t involved in it, I felt a great sense of responsibility,” Morgan said. “It was our agency, our policy. And it was certainly terrible for the family. Morgan believes the missing link is technology.
He created an alert system called Digital Siren that will warn the public when officers are chasing through the area.
“It’s really a fairly simple installation. It doesn’t require any additional work for the officer. Cost-wise, it’s like $264 a year per vehicle,” he said.
Morgan said his company installs technology in law enforcement vehicles. When the officer turns on their lights and sirens and hits a certain speed, it triggers an alert to an app on users phones.
Morgan said it gives drivers a 30 to 45 second warning that a pursuit is happening nearby.
As deaths across the nation rise from pursuits, some departments have begun to implement this tool as a counter-measure.
In October, the father of one of the girls killed, Jason Gill, donated money to the town of Brusly, Louisiana, to install Digital Siren in some of their squad cars.
“This is something that could mean that these two girls didn’t die in vain,” Erin Martin, Maggie Dunn’s mother, said during the meeting when Brusly council accepted the donation.
Morgan believes if police departments in the Baton Rouge area had implemented this technology early, Maggie and Caroline may not have lost their life.
“A 45-second heads up for our particular situation, you never know what the outcome would be,” said Jason Gill.
Recommendations from the U.S. Department of Justice encouraged agencies to explore the use of emerging technology to limit deaths and injuries from chases.
Another company, Star Chase, offers law enforcement a tool that shoots a GPS tracker onto a car.
Videos have gone viral of police departments using a nylon net, nicknamed “The Grappler” to stop fleeing vehicles.
Something we’ve found during this investigation is there’s a lack of accessible data when it comes to police chases.
Morgan said, in addition to sounding an alarm, his product collects pursuit data that tells departments how many people were near a pursuit and received the notification.
If a vehicle law enforcement is tracking has OnStar, law enforcement can call the company and get OnStar to disable the vehicle, according to the DOJ report.
Until that type of technology becomes widely available, Morgan said law enforcement agencies need to be proactive.
Morgan said a few law enforcement agencies in the Upstate, including Oconee County and Pickens, have implemented Digital Siren.
He’s hoping more agencies in his home state will use this technology.
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