PORTLAND, Ore. — The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) is changing its policy to allow more car chases, following a stream of cases where suspects evading police have threatened public safety despite no officers chasing them.
The change in policy goes into effect 30 days from Friday. It will loosen restrictions for officers to chase cars, as well as eliminate speed requirements for those police vehicles. However, police officers are guided to stop a pursuit when safety risks posed to the community outweigh the benefit of a suspect's capture.
PPB stated that it is “an effort to balance critical public safety needs in Portland.”
"Part of the reasoning for this policy change: it gives us a little bit more flexibility to be able to pursue suspects that we may not have pursued before because of the restrictions in the policy, which led to ultimately hoping to reduce crime and the fear of crime," said Chief Bob Day.
Currently, police are restricted in initiating car chases, unless in certain circumstances where there was a reasonable suspicion that the suspect had committed a felony or if the person’s driving conduct could endanger the public.
In 2017, PPB implemented the policy that tightened regulations for officers initiating car chases. The bureau states that since the policy was implemented criminal suspects have tended to evade traffic stops, often driving extremely dangerously even when there are no police chasing them.
During a recent incident involving a stolen vehicle in Northeast Portland, a suspect drove over a sidewalk to avoid a traffic stop. In the attempt to flee, the suspect reached speeds up to 90 miles per hour, weaving in and out of oncoming traffic, and almost caused a crash at Northeast 75th Avenue despite no police being in pursuit. The driver was later arrested.
“In cases like this, policy restrictions have impeded officers’ efforts to quickly intervene and end the suspect’s dangerous driving behavior,” PPB stated.
The new policy allows officers to start car chases in the moment if they feel that the benefits to the public outweigh the "inherent safety risks" of a pursuit.
"We will do a careful evaluation of every event, and weigh the effectiveness," said Chief Day, "Are we able to see a decrease in the number of stolen cars or successful burglary arrests or a decrease in speed racing? ... because they know that there's some intentionality behind our actions that we didn't have before, or we have some authority we didn't have before."