Page 18 - July2021

The doublespeak of the new foot pursuit policy
Once again, the City of Chicago and the people in charge are speaking their favorite language of doublespeak. Recently, the Department autho- rized the new Foot Pursuits General Order,
which once again has very little to do with
crime fighting and violence reduction but
more to do with coddling the bad actors
and making police officers’ jobs more dif-
ficult. All while placing the liability and un- fortunate consequences on the officers and
not the offender. No big surprise here.
The new foot pursuits order can be found at G03- 07, and if you think the language sounds similar to the vehicle pursuits general order, you would be correct. Under Emergency Vehicle Operations–Eluding and Pursuing, which can be found at 03-03-01, officers are required to engage in a balancing test. The order states that “the initiation, continuation, and supervi- sory authorization of each motor vehicle pursuit must conform to the following balancing test: The necessity to immediately apprehend the fleeing suspect outweighs the level of inherent danger created by a motor vehicle pursuit.”
Under the new foot pursuit policy, “Department members will weigh the risks to the involved members, members of the public, and the subject, with the necessity for immediate apprehension of the subject.” Sounds familiar. The only problem with this logic is that there are fundamental differences between engaging in a vehicle pursuit versus engaging in a foot pursuit. The Depart- ment fails to take into consideration that the risks involved in a foot pursuit are much different than those risks encountered by police officers when they engage in a vehicle pursuit, the most
obvious being that the offender is driving a 4,000-pound vehicle. The Department is parroting the vehicle pursuit policy with little to no understanding of the initial purpose of enacting these types of general orders. To understand the reasoning of vehicle pursuit policies you need to look to the initial reason why many jurisdictions, including Chicago, en- acted them. In the 1980s and into the 1990s, many police departments began adopting vehicle pursuit policies. After a number of highly publicized cases where innocent people were killed due to police officers attempting to stop a fleeing subject, many departments nationally looked at the dangers involved in police vehicle pursuits. It was determined that high-speed police chases had become a safety problem, as other vehicles and pedestrians were put in too high a risk due to an offender’s driving. Many times the offender who is attempting to flee will accelerate at excessive rates of speed, ignore traffic laws and otherwise place everyone involved at risk. That is fine. We all understand the idea “It’s just not worth it,” and we turn off
our lights.
While COPA looks at all vehicle pursuits as violations, our
members have been very judicious about protecting the lives of the innocent when engaging in a pursuit. What the early de- signers of the police vehicle pursuit policies did not spend a lot of time dwelling on was the safety of the offender. When the of- fender makes the decision to drive in a dangerous manner, he or she takes that risk, and the focus should not primarily be on his safety but rather the safety of the officers and the general public.
Alternatively, the foot pursuit policy seems to place most of the concern for the offender, not the pursuing officer or the innocent civilian. The new general order pays lip service to the safety of
TIM GRACE
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18 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JULY 2021