High-Speed Chases

Highspeed Border Patrol Chases: A Recipe for Death

Because of vastly increased criminal penalties imposed on migrant smugglers, these individuals over recent years have taken more and more dangerous steps to avoid arrest.  Heavy jail sentences now imposed on smugglers have in no way reduced their illicit operations, but instead have resulted in the conversion of smugglers into weapons-carrying, hard-core, often violent criminals who routinely rob, sexually abuse, assault, kidnap, and falsely imprison migrants. It is also well known in border communities, and certainly to the U.S. Border Patrol, that this breed of violent smugglers will risk their lives and the lives of their human cargo to avoid arrest and extremely long prison sentences.  

Under these well-known circumstances, hot pursuit cases by the Border Patrol are a recipe for death, injury, and the destruction of property. Indeed, except in cases in which delaying the prompt apprehension of a smuggler endangers the lives of law enforcement officers, smuggled migrants, or members of the public, permitting a policy or practice permitting hot pursuits of migrant smugglers is reckless in the extreme in terms of the safety of the migrants being transported by the smuggler as well as the safety of members of the public. A number of law enforcement agencies across the nation have severely limited the use of high-speed pursuits because it is well known that they pose a substantial risk to the officers involved, those being pursued, and to innocent members of the public.  

The U.S. Border Patrol needs to evaluate the violent deaths and costly medical care for the severely injured caused by a combination of the disregard for life exhibited by smugglers and recklessness of Border Patrol hot pursuits, and balance these costs against the marginal benefit of stopping a smuggler’s vehicle quickly versus slowly but safely. We are uncertain whether the Border Patrol has created and maintained systems to collect information on pursuit driving. Without this information, the impact and dangers of its policies on hot pursuit cannot be determined. Nor have we found any information indicating that the Border Patrol has reviewed and updated pursuit policies based on analysis of pursuit data.  (read more...)