Valley in the PITS?
...hat are not predictable. In another interview, a Scottsdale police officer stated in the Arizona Republic, “That it (PIT) gives law enforcement another tool to prevent fleeing violators from killing people in vehicles and causing damage.” It is true that the PIT is another tool, but this tool, if done incorrectly, can cause the death of innocent people both in a vehicle and on the ground. There are several things that police officers must take into consideration before implementing the PIT and one of those is speed. The same California Highway Patrol manual, as mentioned above, states that the PIT should not be implemented if either the suspect or the pursuing officer is going more than 35mph. Ask any driver in the Valley if they drive under 35mph on most Valley roads and they will say of course not. Most drivers follow the speed of the surrounding traffic which is on average 7 or more miles over the speed limit. An article in the Arizona Republic states that the Mesa police department would restrict the use a PIT maneuver to under 35mph. If an officer conducts a PIT over 35mph he would be charged with the use of deadly force. The same article states that Mesa has been training their driving instructors to perform the PITdeliberate rammingup to 45 mph. Why would you train officers to use the PIT at a 45mph- a deadly force speed? That is 10miles per hour more than the legal limit they proposed. This being the case it is unreasonable to train police officers to use the PIT at 35mph when the majority of Valley traffic goes over 35mph. Another condition that a police officer must take into consideration is the location that the chase takes place. A Glendale public information officer suggested that in cities such as Chicago the PIT might be successful because traffic congestion does not allow suspects to get up to a high rate of speed. However, in parts of the Valley where there is little to no congestion, it actually encourages suspects to go faster. In one case where the police officer thought the location was prime, a 14 year old boy named Andrew was injured when the car he was a passenger in slammed into a concrete retaining wall. Do we want to give police officers the control to make unrestricted judgments in the heat of the moment? If we do, who is going to enforce the law if a police officer forgets to check the speed of his vehicle and causes a person in or out of the vehicle to die or if a police officer’s judgment pertaining to the location of a proposed PIT maneuver is incorrect. It is this type of error in judgment that caused injury and death of the two suspects in Georgia; Hoa Nguyen an innocent high-school bystander, Reinart a motorcyclist in Milwaukee, 13 year old Jesse Keith and Andrew D. Weaver a 14yr old passenger in California. It is a national epidemic that affects all the states in America and now this state might become another on the list of statistics. We as taxpaying citizens can make a difference. If Arizonans don’t stop the PIT, the total fatalities reported by the PMTFPursuit Management Task Force now being 1,547 deaths a year, might sky-rocket if Mesa adopts this program. In a report by the PMTF 63% believed that the PIT maneuver works yet 37% of the same people believed that the PIT maneuver comes at too high of an expense. Just ask the PMTF and other police agencies and they will tell you that 96% of all police agencies want new pursuit technology. Technology that wont injury themselves or others. Sure no one wants to let suspected criminals go but, injuring them or others is not the answer. While giving due difference to difficult judgment calls made on the street, we must also insure the r...