ORLANDO, Fla — Some nights, central Florida’s roadways look like a video game, with drivers weaving in and out of traffic as you are driving home from work, the grocery store or soccer practice. Some of them are chases by Florida’s troopers.
It’s dangerous for everyone, and state troopers are making it clear to these drivers that their decisions can be deadly.
One trooper told the driver he stopped, “I had to do what i had to do. You were going to kill someone.”
It’s been a year and a half since the Florida Highway Patrol changed its policy to pursue relaxing their rules of engagement.
The policy states, “In evaluating the need to initiate a pursuit, the member must determine if the suspect is actively fleeing and eluding a law enforcement officer or has previously committed a forcible felony.”
Since then, Maj. Mark Castleberry said his troop, Troop D in central Florida, had almost 300 people flee in a year.
“When motorists decide, ‘hey, I’m going to run law enforcement. I’m going to flee from whatever criminal thing I was doing or am doing,’ our direction is, hey. chase them, yes. Try and end it quickly. We recognize that pursuits are dangerous. We’re not blind to that, so our job is to engage and try and ultimately end it quickly and then make the arrest.”
Their policy is different than many local agencies that shy away from pursuits unless the crime is so serious the reason outweighs the risk.
Orange County Sheriff John Mina said, “Last year of our pursuits, 40% ended in a crash. So the numbers are just there. and then eventually, if you’re just chasing everyone just to chase everyone, people are going to get killed and certainly we don’t want our law enforcement officers to be in the middle of that.”
The major says they know the dangers and do everything possible to do it safely, saying that every pursuit is reviewed to see what could be done differently and will make changes when they need too.
“They get vetted to make sure that we’re doing this pursuit the safest way possible. Along with that, every single member has gone through additional training, and we do that in the classroom, we do that out on the road because the agency recognizes that, hey, this is dangerous. There’s liability attached to pursuits. So we’re not blind to that. but we also very much passionately realize we have a job to do,” he said.
And that job is to stop those who are committing crimes and causing chaos in our communities.
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