Providing social and legal order, protection and defense of the rights, interests of individuals and organizations, the state protection from illegal encroachments, maintenance of internal peace and harmony in society, regulating social relations, social withdrawal contradictions – all this is not a complete list of challenges facing the state police government. Its activities are also aimed at the protection of life, health, honor and dignity of citizens, the protection of the state and public property, as well as private property.
Safety of people on the roads and in the streets is the major task for the police department. There are several options that the police departments use to prevent endangered situations in the streets for passersby, to prevent violation of traffic rules and to find out the felons and stop them right in time to not cause any harm to civil people. The tactics and techniques that are used by police officers vary and the pursuit of fleeing vehicles is one of the possible ways to perform the successful police operation.
There is a specific set of rules that need to be followed to have all the chances to perform the pursuit successfully. First of all the police office department works out their specific tactics and calculates and discusses all the possible ways for the criminals to move in their district. Moreover, they have to be supervisory responsible and to have the process of pursuit under the high-level control. The communication network should be of high standards and to be protected from possible outside intruding. Car chases usually occur when a suspect makes an attempt to use a vehicle for the escape from law enforcement that attempt to detain or even arrest them. Assumed offense committed may range from misdemeanors such as traffic violations to crimes as serious as murder.
The moment the suspect realizes they have been seen by law enforcement, it is more likely they attempt to escape from their pursuers by high speed driving away. (Reaves, 2002). Since the speed level of police pursuits is always high there is a higher risk of car crashes and other accidents that can even involve passersby or other people. The most evident argument for police officer’s pursuit is that this measure can be one of the most effective to catch a violator and to protect the innocent people from danger that they might experience while the criminal is in the streets of their city.
There is a certain difference between fleeing felons and traffic violators that can be met on the road. It is one of the major tasks for police officers to differentiate and to determine whether the speeding vehicle is a criminal or he or she violate traffic rules. First of all traffic violation includes lighter disobedience of the rules like driving without driving license or operating a vehicle that has no insurance, driving recklessly or driving in the state of severe alcoholic intoxication or in drugs intoxication and hit and run actions misdemeanor (Alpert, 2000). If to speak about fleeing felons they can be characterized by more serious violations like hit and run felony that caused death to a person, vehicular homicide, repeat driving under the drug or alcoholic intoxication or speeding after committing robbery or some other violent crime. However, no matter what is the severity of the crimes committed and what is the type of vehicle that is under the control of a person who violated the rules, it should be pursuit by police.
Every police department has their own specific tactics and technologies that help to perform the successful pursuit of a fleeing vehicle. One of the widely spread tactics is called “Tactical Observation”. That is calm and thoughtful watching after the felon’s action and analyzing his possible further actions and calculating the possible steps for him to take in the course of action. Another tactics that can also be combined with “Tactical Observation” is called “Vehicle Intercept Procedure” (Alpert, 2000). That is observing of the actions of a felon with the aim of finding the best chance and position to put an end to further action without letting them to grow into police officer’s pursuit and it means waiting for the vehicle to stop or to slow down the speed that will lead to the possibility of police officers to catch him.
There are also two main approaches to the ways of ending the pursuit. One of the most effective is the so-called boxing in the escaping vehicle with special police cruisers to slow down their speed, which automatically will cause the felon’s car to stop too.
Another possible variant is very dangerous; needs a high level of experience of the police officer and can be extremely dangerous for the surrounding vehicles and civilians that can be simple passersby. This tactics means a specific hit of a police car of the felon’s car corner side in such a way that his vehicle will start spinning and thus will stop. Police use a great number of techniques to stop chases, pleading the driver or waiting for the vehicle to run out of gas, or hoping that the driver’s vehicle becomes disabled by forceful methods such as, ramming the vehicle, usage of PIT maneuver, shooting on tires, or the usage of spike strips, however, many of these efforts pose a risk to all participants, as well as innocent bystanders, thus, it should also be aimed to preventing the risk to civilians. The helicopter can be used, which may follow the escaping vehicle from above, and land units may not be involved.
A great deal of new technologies are used nowadays to stop and to prevent fleeing vehicles. These include special equipment that releases certain amount of electric energy that leads to the default of vehicle electronic system and it becomes possible to stop the felon. High-speed car chases are stated to be road safety problem, for the matter that those vehicles not involved in the pursuit can be hit by the elusive driver, who often violates a number of rules on the road, often repeatedly, during their attempt to escape, or pursuing police cars. These facts lead to a strong necessity to search for some other technologies and projects to be applied in order to lower the level of danger during the pursuit. Thus, one of the possible variant is involving the GPRS channels for the better results in searching for the vehicle and switching off or even controlling the electronic system of the escaping vehicle with the help of that.
