Pursuit

Posted by: Blue

On Christmas Day I was the prime unit for a traffic pursuit which began on the same block that I live on.

We spotted two males running through the field near my house where the power lines run through that part of the city.  I thought it was odd to see 2 males dressed in baggy black clothing jogging late on a Christmas night, especially in my neighbourhood.

We turned around to check them out.  They hopped into a grey Chevy Cavalier.  I hit the cherries and pulled up parallel with their front bumper (approaching from the front of their car so our front bumpers were facing one another, but I was still in the traffic lane).

The driver didn't look at me.  He immediately started shimmying his car, trying to get it out of the parallel parking spot I had wedged him into.  He reversed.  I went forward and put the front driver's side bumper of the unmarked cruiser we were in at his driver's side door so he couldn't jump out.

"Get us another unit here now!" I told my partner.

The car slammed into our bumper, pushed us out of the way and took-off W/B.  I revved the engine, spinning the rear-wheel drive Crown Vic into a 180 on the icy road.  We gave chase.

He stopped at the first stop sign, and then went through every other stop sign and red light.

My partner started calmly calling the pursuit over the air, asking to be patched into the other districts.

It was quiet.  Every available unit volunteered and was assigned.  By the time we were 1000 yards away, the suspects ran-over a well-placed Stop-Stick, taking-out their front passenger-side tire.

The pursuit continued with the suspects on three tires and one rim.  A Downtown unit came up behind us to take-over as prime unit because they were a marked unit.

They hit another Stop-Stick around 1000 yards further up.  Two more tires blown.  They only had 1 intact now - the driver's side rear tire.

The downtown unit got out in front of the suspects and tried to slow them down.  They took a left.  We were prime again.

They made it another block and we saw the driver's door crack open as the vehicle slowed to a stop.  "He's running!", I yelled.  My partner voiced it over the air.

The passenger was slower to get out of the car (we found-out later it was because he was holding a safe on his lap and had to wait until the driver bailed so he had a place to ditch it).  He opened the door to come nose to nose with my partner's Glock.  He gave up and hit the ground on his belly, hands outstretched.

I gave chase to the driver down the back lane of the street we had just come down, along with one of the guys from the downtown car.  Units were flooding the area.

I got hung-up with my duty rig on a chain-link fence when the suspect headed for the front street again, tearing the sleeve off of my shirt and cutting my shoulder.  The downtown guy kept going.  When I managed to free myself, they were about 75 yards ahead of me and the driver was cutting back into the back lane.  I cut back, hoping to intercept.

I gunned it, scanning for a figure emerging from a back yard.  The downtown guy came across the air "I've got him in the side yard of 29!"

I could see the reflection of the flashlight against the snow and darted over there, drawing-out my Taser as I ran.  I showed-up and found the suspect proned-out.  "Contact," said the downtown guy.  "Cover," I replied.  He moved-in to cuff him while I kept the red laser of the Taser in the centre of his back.  "Don't don anything dumb or you're gonna get lit-up," I said.

He was cuffed and brought to one of the cruisers.

The driver was on a warrant plus numerous breaches.  The passenger had breaches, not to mention the Flight charge, Dangerous Operation of a Motor Vehicle and Possession of Break-in Instruments for both of them.  The safe belonged to a drug dealer who wasn't cooperating, so we couldn't get the Break and Enter or Possession of Goods Obtained by Crime.

During the Duty Inspector's briefing, she told us the only reason she didn't abort the pursuit on the icy winter roads was that my partner was extremely calm and reassuringly in control of the situation while he was voicing over the radio.