NC lawyer: Our laws on police chases aren’t tough enough. People are dying. | Opinion
Editor’s note: The writer is an attorney who has represented NC families following fatal police pursuits.
Earlier this month, The News & Observer reported that the number of deadly police pursuits has increased in North Carolina and nationwide.
According to the article, from 2017 to 2021, there were 92 deaths in police pursuits in North Carolina. In the past 40 years, at least 4,200 innocent people have died nationwide because of police pursuits, and the number is likely under-reported.
Victims of police pursuits deserve justice — and police need a deterrent to ensure they consider the safety of the innocent victims they are sworn to protect. But under N.C. law, it’s nearly impossible to hold officers responsible for their negligent acts. You must prove that the officer acted with “gross negligence.” Even when police admit they violated their own policies, that is not enough. The standard is so difficult that it effectively makes police in North Carolina immune from civil liability for the injuries and deaths of innocent victims they cause.
In September 2023, a mother and her child lost their lives after a Hickory police officer collided with their minivan in pursuit of a suspect on a motorcycle. It is a bitter irony that the officer was pursuing the suspect for driving recklessly.
In January 2022, a single mother of two was killed in Charlotte when police pursued a vehicle over a purported illegal license plate cover — as police read out the license plate number over the radio. The purported license plate violator was never charged for a foggy plate cover. I represent one of the victim’s families in a wrongful death lawsuit.
The N.C. legislature must immediately pass a law lowering the standard from gross to ordinary negligence to hold officers accountable when they violate their own pursuit policies. In addition, N.C. police departments must be required to record and publicly report comprehensive pursuit data, including crashes, injuries and deaths.
To be clear, we don’t have to make a choice between police accountability or an increase in crime. Data shows that restricting police pursuits to the most serious situations saves lives without increasing crime.
A 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Justice, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the Police Executive Research Forum recommends that police should only pursue fleeing suspects when “(1) a violent crime has been committed and (2) the suspect poses an imminent threat to commit another violent crime.” The victims in Hickory and Charlotte would be alive today if those two criteria had been met.
Data from the Wake County Sheriff’s Office over the past six years shows that about two-thirds of their pursuits started with a simple traffic violation. And only about 20% of their chases even resulted in an arrest. The conclusion is clear — crime will not skyrocket if police chase fewer people committing traffic violations.
Overwhelming evidence proves that more restrictive pursuit policies save lives by reducing the number of bystander injuries and deaths. For example, a 2021 study of restrictive pursuit policies at two police departments in Roanoke, Virginia found that they made police chases shorter, safer, less costly and drastically less frequent without an increase in criminal activity, allowing police to focus on more serious crimes.
It’s important to note that it’s not just innocent bystanders that pay the price for deadly police pursuits. According to the Centers for Disease Control, motor-vehicle crashes — including those resulting from police pursuits — are one of the main causes of death for police officers.
In North Carolina, pursuit policies are generally set by local police departments, sheriff’s offices, and the N.C. Highway Patrol. Police departments in our state should be required by law to develop safe and restrictive pursuit policies with consequences for departments that fail to develop or maintain acceptable policies.
Is it worth risking human lives to pursue someone over a license plate cover? North Carolina must act now to reduce police chase deaths and injuries. North Carolina police departments must be required by law to adopt more restrictive pursuit policies and follow formal, comprehensive reporting procedures for pursuit crashes and the injuries and deaths they cause. Accountability and transparency are how we protect people from these needless tragedies.
Paul Dickinson is a personal injury attorney at the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin.
