09-19-2015, 12:52 PM
(09-18-2015, 11:19 AM)fredtoast Wrote: Those are things that people voluntarily do to themselves.
You are really on a roll with these "false equivalency" arguments today.
So your assertion is that the only people harmed by alcohol consumption are the people actually consuming it? Do I really need to bring up the thousands of people killed and injured by drunk drivers? How about the thousands of assaults that result from alcohol consumption? How about the instances of domestic violence fueled by alcohol consumption? The point being made is that society balances activities on the scale of risk versus reward. In the case of alcohol society has decided that the reward of being able to drink alcohol, to inebriation or otherwise, outweighs all the risks described above. In my opinion this decision becomes even easier in regards to police pursuits. The benefits of catching tens of thousands of felons, violent or otherwise, a year far outweighs the statistically insignificant amount of innocent people killed during high speed pursuits. How about motor vehicles as a whole? We could eliminate traffic fatalities entirely by limiting motor vehicles to twenty-five miles per hour. But, we have decided that the benefits of being able to get places quicker outweighs the over thirty thousand people killed per year in traffic accidents. Is the point maybe starting to sink in?
The article cited by OP states that;
Quote:More than 5,000 bystanders and passengers have been killed in police car chases since 1979, and tens of thousands more were injured as officers repeatedly pursued drivers at high speeds and in hazardous conditions, often for minor infractions, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
Let's take the, intentionally vague, numbers above at face value. That means that an average of 139 people are killed a year by police pursuits. 139 people out of a nation of 200-300 million (adjusting for the timeline cited above). Is this really a topic that deserves intense scrutiny? The realistic answer is hell no. Is this a topic that's only even being discussed because of the present atmosphere of questioning absolutely anything law enforcement does? The realistic answer is hell yes. Also, when an article like this uses the intentionally vague term, "often", when making a point it means the actual numbers don't reinforce the argument being advanced. Let's say just ten percent of police pursuits involve a violent felon, a very generous number from me, that means that literally thousands of violent felons are apprehended after police pursuits every year. If you throw in felons in general, which would include dangerous and invasive crimes like burglary, you get tens of thousands more.
What people on your side of the argument completely ignore, and what AU pointed out very well above, is that if you don't allow any police pursuits unless a person involved is a known violent felon then you'll see an exponential increase in the number of people fleeing law enforcement. The absurd concept of catching them later is just that, absurd. As a defense attorney you know that simply apprehending people because the car used in a high speed escape is registered to you would never hold up in court. Unless you apprehend the person directly from the vehicle you know that the odds of getting a convictable arrest is virtually nil. Not to mention the myriad other crimes that couldn't be proven because the arrest took place hours or days after the event.
Finally, a little piece of anecdotal evidence. Just yesterday we got two homicide suspects, from MS btw, we've been beating the bushes for because of a traffic stop for expired tags that turned into an, albeit brief, high speed pursuit. No one involved was a "known violent felon" when the pursuit began. Good thing for us we don't have the insane rules you're proposing in place or those two POS's would still be roaming the street engaging in gang related murder. Serendipity right?
