Drinking and driving is stupid and wrong.
A hot police pursuit under these circumstances is stupid and wrong.
Police need to have strict rules regarding when a pursuit is appropriate. It is almost certain that these two people would still be alive if they had not pursued the driver after trying to pull her over. They had her license info so they could have picked her up later without incident. Much safer to let a drunk drive on home rather than chase them at high speed....stupid, so effing stupid.
“Much safer to let a drunk drive on home rather than chase them at high speed...”
You can’t be serious.
Are you actually suggesting that drunk drivers NOT get stopped and arrested?
Letting them successfully flee only postpones the carnage until later. Better to stop them immediately.
If they decide to rabbit, then all consequences land on them, NOT the agency attempting the stop.
Unless, of course, she continued, on blew a red light, plowed into another couple of cars, killing their occupants and a couple of pedestrians.
Then, folks like you would be up in arms that the police had spotted her and let her keep going.
Second guessing makes anyone look like a genius.
The driver was already “weaving in and out of lanes” on the freeway. It is quite likely that the same sort of thing would have happened at some point that evening.
I think an attempted stop and pursuit was appropriate. Also, if they let the driver leave the car and go into her house, they can no longer get her for DUI, since they can’t prove who was driving.
You conclusion of certainty that two folks would still be alive had no pursuit occurred is flawed logic. This woman was driving in a manner that pretty well guaranteed she would kill someone.
One Adam 12: Dispatch, we're in hot pursuit.
(Yeah thats the ticket. You have a suspected drunk driver, so you chase them.)
It would be nice if that were an option. But the woman would simply claim that she was not the driver at the time.
I recall a similar incident where the police were chasing a motorcyclist. The motorcyclist got away, but not before the police got his license plate number. The case fell apart because the police could not prove who was actually driving the cycle at the time.
My ex-husband had a superior officer convince him to let some boys go home one night after having pulled them over and discovering alcohol, marijuana. They lived just down the street, you know. I got to deal with him after he pulled a young woman out from under the dash of her car after one of these poor boys, just getting off of making one mistake, went back out. And the resulting lawsuits.
The blame lies entirely on the woman who couldn’t control herself enough to make intelligent decision. Got drunk, find a different way home. Got caught driving drunk, pull over and deal with your consequences.
About 360 people are killed each year in police chases and an estimated 10,228 people died in drunk driving crashes in 2010 in the United States (latest figures available), according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
You a liberal, or disconnected from reality?