Imagine for a moment, you’re a young person, in charge of a powerful vehicle, driving at speed, with the adrenaline pumping. Are you going to make rational decisions?
Well, that’s the scenario for patrol cops involved in chases.
I can see why a lot of these incidents end in death. All the vehicles involved are being driven by people amped to the max.
Yet yesterday’s senseless killing of three young people was worse that most deaths by cop. In this case, somebody in the Police made the decision to lay road spikes across Blenheim Rd, Christchurch, a busy four lane arterial , knowing that a speeding vehicle was going to drive over them and lose traction.
What did the Police involved think was going to happen?
Did they not factor in the fact that there were others in the car who should have been presumed to be innocent?
Did they not factor in the huge risk to the public?
All to stop a driver who would probably have only been looking at a short spell in prison, at the outside.
Where’s the benefit to society in these chases?
As of March last year, no people had died in Police chases in Queensland in the previous 9 years. Zero. The other Aussie states are similarly less deadly to deal with on the road.
But for some reason, we have to chase to the death.
35 dead in 6 years.
Ironically, just about every car chase death involves a Police spokesperson using a variation on this phrase:
“We ended the chase and shortly after the offender crashed”.
Yeah, I s’pose ….
Look, at the heart of this problem is young people, mainly young men, stealing cars. But that’s it.
A car’s an object, it’s insured, it’s replaceable.
The people that die in these chases are not replaceable.
If the driver of the car in Christchurch had not been apprehended, well, so what?
We give knighthoods to white collar crooks in NZ, so why do we chase blue collar criminals to death?
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