Shortly
before midnight on March 28, 2017, a silver Dodge Caravan streaked past
Highway Patrol Trooper Dustin A. Motsinger as he sat parked along a stretch of highway in rural North Carolina. Motsinger raced after
the speeding van. The driver stopped, but as the trooper climbed out of
his cruiser, the van drove off. Motsinger gave chase.
Inside the van that night, 15-year-old Osiel Carbajal was at the wheel.
His passengers: his 16-year-old sister, her 15-year-old boyfriend and a
15-year-old friend. The teens had taken the van without permission from
Carbajal’s mother in nearby Morven.
“Possibly 55, they’re all over the place,” Motsinger told his supervisor on the radio, using the code for a drunk driver.
“If you can PIT him, go ahead,” said the supervisor.
As the teens crossed the Anson County line at 100 mph, Motsinger caught
up with them. Then, he bumped his Dodge Charger into the right rear
quarter panel of the Caravan, sending it off the road.
The van flipped and began to cartwheel, landing almost 500 feet away.
The force sheared the wheels from the left side of the vehicle. The
impact hurled three of the teens from the Caravan. Two of them died. One
broke his back. The driver suffered minor injuries.
The trooper’s maneuver was no accident — it was a PIT, or precision immobilization technique, a tactical driving maneuver for which he’d been trained.
In a successful PIT, the pursuing officer uses their cruiser to push
the fleeing vehicle’s rear end sideways, sending it into a spin and
ending the pursuit. But the tactic can have deadly consequences.
So far this year, nine people have been killed nationwide in PIT maneuvers, including a 16-year-old who was driving a stolen car in Longmont, Colo., and a driver and their passenger who were being chased by police for speeding in Creek County, Okla. Just this month, a 29-year-old suspected drunk driver who fled a traffic stop in Coweta County, Ga., died after a PIT maneuver.
Since 2016 at least 30 people have died and hundreds have been injured —
including some officers — when police used the maneuver to end
pursuits, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.
Out of those deaths, 18 came after officers attempted to stop vehicles
for minor traffic violations such as speeding. In eight cases, police
were pursuing a stolen car, and in two, drivers were suspected of
serious felonies. Two other drivers had been reported as suicidal.
Ten of the 30 killed were passengers in the fleeing vehicles; four were bystanders or the victim of a crime.
Half of the people who died in the crashes were people of color: nine
Black, four Hispanic and one Native American. Fourteen of those killed
were White, and the race of two could not be determined.
The total number of people who have been killed or injured as a result
of the maneuver is unknown because the nation’s more than 18,000 police
departments are not required by the federal government to keep track.
The death on May 25 of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis
police officer has led to renewed public scrutiny of violent police
tactics, including shootings, stun guns and chokeholds. But the PIT
maneuver — also a potentially deadly use of force by police — has not
received the same attention, despite its risk and widespread adoption by
departments nationwide.
To study the tactic, The Post gathered statistics about PIT deaths and
injuries since 2016 from news reports and records from the 100 largest
city police departments and 49 state police agencies. Responses were
received from 142 of them. Most departments do not break out deaths and
injuries and were able to provide only policies on whether they used the
maneuver. Many were unable to say how often chases ended in PITs.
One of the nine drivers killed this year was 34-year-old Justin
Battenfield, a man whose family said he was mentally disabled and loved
to drive the roads around his home in Van Buren, Ark.
Shortly after dawn on April 10, Battenfield, in a Dodge Ram, failed to
stop at a traffic signal and then began to flee when a U.S. Forest
Service officer attempted to stop him. Arkansas State Trooper Michael
Shawn Ellis picked up the pursuit. Dashboard-camera video from the
trooper’s car captured Battenfield as he swerved into the path of
oncoming traffic. “Get this car stopped as soon as there’s an opening,” a
supervisor told Ellis over the radio.
Ellis hit Battenfield’s truck at 109 mph, sending both vehicles into a
tumble. Battenfield’s truck landed on its roof, and acted as a ramp for
the trooper’s car, launching it into the air, where it sliced through
two street lamps.
Battenfield died and Trooper Ellis suffered “non-life-threatening injuries,” according to state police.
“They should have backed off and he would have come on home,” said
Carol Henson, Battenfield’s mother. “Then they could have come up and
got him.”
An Arkansas State Patrol spokesman said the department regretted the
loss of life, but emphasized that the PIT often hinges on the
unpredictable behavior of the fleeing driver.
“The PIT . . . is supposed to be a controlled maneuver based on all of
the factors at that second the law enforcement officer’s bumper makes
contact with the vehicle. That’s what everything is based on. If the
suspect changes the dynamics in any way, it could very easily turn bad,
and no question about it,” said spokesman Bill Sadler. He declined to
make Ellis available for comment.
When performed at slower speeds — generally 35 to 45 mph — the maneuver can be safe and effective to end pursuits, experts said.
The Los Angeles Police Department reports that it has used PIT maneuvers since 2005 without a death or serious injury.
The department does not permit the maneuver at over 35 mph. Officers
are not allowed to chase or PIT vehicles that are fleeing minor traffic
violations. And, its use is limited to pursuits involving dangerous
felons or drunk drivers.
“It allows us to safeguard the surrounding community while capturing an
offender who has committed a serious offense,” Los Angeles Police Chief
Michel R. Moore said. He described it as an important tool in specific
circumstances.
“We recognize that over that speed the dynamic nature and the physics
of an engagement can result in a vehicle that becomes a risk to the
public, the occupants and the officers,” Moore said.
At greater
speeds, the maneuver has launched cars into traffic, trees and in one
case killed a woman in Tift County, Ga., as she stood in her front yard.
“When you start getting into high speeds it gets very dangerous,” said
Rick Giovengo, who has studied the use of the PIT as a senior research
analyst at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers in Glynco, Ga.,
where federal, state, local and tribal officers from across the country
train to use the PIT.
Despite the risk, there has been little national research on its safety or benefits.
In 2006, the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police conducted one of
the few studies of the maneuver as part of a wider look at police
pursuits in the state. The report concluded that “the PIT maneuver is
controlled and predictable” but “in certain circumstances could result
in serious injury or death.” Those circumstances, the report said,
included a PIT on a driver who is not wearing a seat belt, a PIT that
ejected people from the fleeing vehicle or a PIT that knocked the
fleeing car into a roll.
The Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based think tank that
advises police chiefs on policy, has examined the lethal use of
firearms and police pursuits, but not the use of the PIT.
“We generally don’t recommend it,” said Chuck Wexler, executive
director of the group. “You wouldn’t want to endanger the officer or the
person you’re pursuing unless you had some reason to believe they were
going to commit a violent crime.”
Karen M. Blum, a law professor at Suffolk University Law School,
studied the tactic for the National Police Accountability Project, which
filed a brief in a Supreme Court case brought by a man who was
paralyzed in 2001 during an attempted PIT by a Georgia police officer.
“Over a certain speed there is nothing precise about a PIT maneuver,”
Blum said. “It amounts to a ramming that turns two heavy vehicles into
deadly projectiles.”
Bystanders pay a price
Last year, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office in Florida engaged in more
than 200 police pursuits, ending 61 of them with PITs, according to an
annual report from the office.
Only one of those ended in a death: Louis Warren Reese, an 84-year-old retired Navy veteran who had been kidnapped.
Shortly after 2 p.m. on Jan. 2, 2019, a gunman robbed the Lucky Charms
Arcade in Jacksonville and fled on foot into Reese’s backyard. Police
surrounded Reese’s property. The suspected gunman, Lawrence Hall III,
broke into Reese’s house, shoved him into the back of his Dodge SUV
parked in the garage, opened the door and sped away.
As a police helicopter and patrol cars followed the fleeing SUV, police
searched for Reese — unaware that he was in the back of the SUV,
according to police reports.
During the chase — which reached speeds in excess of 100 mph — Hall
drove into an officer attempting to place tire deflation sticks in the
road. Another officer attempted to PIT the SUV, but failed and crashed.
Finally, eight miles from where it began, a K-9 officer performed a PIT
on the fleeing vehicle, according to police reports.
The PIT sent the SUV into a cement telephone pole and the car split in
two. Power lines fell onto its roof, and the car began to burn. Police
rescued Hall — and then realized Reese also was in the car.
“The responding officers extinguished the fire, and it was at this time
they discovered an elderly male . . . in the back seat of the vehicle,”
officers wrote in a report. Reese, a deacon at his church, suffered a
collapsed lung and multiple fractures, including a broken leg, arm and
spine, his family told a local television station. He died in the hospital a week later. His family did not respond to requests for comment.
Hall and two deputies suffered serious injuries. The deputies were
awarded Purple Heart medals and Hall was charged with attempted murder
and kidnapping. The case is pending. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office
declined to comment on the crash or their use of the maneuver, citing an
ongoing investigation into the crimes.
Throughout the 1990s, only a few departments nationwide embraced the
tactic, which is known by various names, including tactical vehicle
intervention, or TVI. In 1996, a Tampa Police sergeant on a search for
new tactics to safely end pursuits learned of its use by police in
Fairfax County, Va.
“I can teach a chimpanzee how to do this,” he later told the Tampa Bay
Times. Other departments began using the PIT, including the Georgia
State Patrol.
Since 1997, the patrol has performed more than 1,500 PIT maneuvers,
according to court and agency records, logging the first fatality in
1998. Since then, at least 34 people have been killed, including seven
since 2016.
“When it’s utilized within policy and within state law, we feel we’re
doing a good job and that there are no reservations,” said Lt. Stephanie
Stallings, a Georgia State Patrol spokeswoman. “Certainly we would
never want a death to occur from any maneuver that we utilize but
unfortunately there are cases when death is a result.”
Other departments across the state have adopted the PIT maneuver — in some cases leading to disastrous outcomes.
Last September, a Whitfield County, Ga., deputy used a PIT to end his pursuit of a stolen car.
The 21-year-old driver, Makayla Whitt, was ejected and thrown 50 feet
and her left arm was severed below the elbow, according to police
reports. Whitt could not be reached for comment.
In June 2018, in Monroe County, Ga., a sheriff’s deputy pulled over
28-year-old Guadalupe Garcia because of a suspected window-tinting
violation, according to local news reports.
Garcia fled and the deputy performed a PIT at nearly 76 mph, knocking
his Toyota Camry into trees, throwing Garcia and his 19-year-old nephew
from the car. Garcia died and his nephew told The Post he was
hospitalized for at least two weeks.
The Monroe County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Priscilla Villaneueva, Garcia’s girlfriend and the mother of their
three children, told The Post that he had been in trouble with police
and was afraid of being deported. He had been arrested before on drug
charges. “I think they should have tried another method of slowing the
car down,” Villaneueva said. “The PIT was done at such a high speed.”
Outside Atlanta, on Dec. 4, 2018, South Fulton police attempted to pull over a Hyundai Sonata that had been reported stolen.
The driver, 19-year-old Emmitt Daniels, sped off, nearly striking an
officer who had just exited his police vehicle. Officers gave chase,
pursuing Daniels for about three miles and reaching speeds of at least
65 mph, according to police reports.
As Daniels
passed a cluster of townhouses, one of the officers performed a PIT
maneuver, using his Dodge Charger to strike the right rear corner of the
Hyundai, sending it spinning across a sidewalk. The car splintered a
utility pole and rolled up a steep embankment, coming to a stop. Daniels
sprinted into the townhouses, escaping police.
As police investigated, they found a shoe near the scene of the crash,
which they suspected Daniels lost while fleeing, according to a local news report.
Five weeks later a landscaper working in the area found the body of
41-year-old Marcus McCrary, who had been struck and killed by the
out-of-control Hyundai. McCrary’s body, which was found hidden behind
bushes, was missing its lower left leg, the landscaper told The Post.
Police later found the lower part of McCrary’s leg in a wheel well of the Hyundai in an impound lot.
McCrary’s twin sister, Miracle Walker, said that the day of the crash,
McCrary was on the way to her house, only a few blocks away. When he
didn’t show up she tried to find him, but had no luck.
She said she now knows the exact moment her brother died: The lights in
her house went out when Daniels’s vehicle knocked over the power lines.
“The
officers said speeds were up to 90 miles an hour,” Walker told The
Post, saying that both the police and Daniels are to blame. “There’s not
any given time you can go down that street and there aren’t
pedestrians.”
Daniels was arrested a few weeks later on charges of felony murder and
homicide by vehicle for the death of McCrary, according to court
documents.
The case is ongoing. An attorney for Daniels did not respond
to a request for comment.
South Fulton Police Chief Keith Meadows also did not respond to requests for comment.
‘We don’t want to take the chance’
The risks of using the PIT have divided departments. Of the 142 law
enforcement agencies that responded to The Post, 74 said they do not use
the maneuver. One would not say.
“We do not use the PIT maneuver, and the reason is safety,” said Paul
Linders, a spokesman for the St. Paul Police Department in Minnesota.
“If our officers were to PIT a vehicle in a residential area, the
vehicle could wind up in a yard, playground or storefront. We don’t want
to take the chance of injuring an innocent bystander to end a pursuit
that way.”
The New York State Police do not use the tactic “due to the potential
danger it poses for the targeted vehicle occupants, the pursuing
Troopers, and the motoring public,” according to Beau Duffy, a spokesman
for department.
Fairfax County Police, one of the first departments to embrace the
maneuver, said they have trained many agencies across the country to use
it.
“We can do a PIT with minimal damage or no damage besides paint transfer
between two vehicles and get the car to stop where we want it to stop,”
said 2nd Lt. Jay Jackson, who is in charge of the center and track in
Chantilly, Va., where Fairfax police conduct pursuit training.
Officers gradually learn how to match the speed of a fleeing vehicle
and make contact with the vehicle in motion, Jackson said. Officers
cannot use the tactic on the streets until they have completed eight
successful PITs on the track. They are required to recertify every three
years.
Jackson said that at 45 mph and below, the fleeing cars will spin 180
degrees into the next lane. Above that speed, events are less
predictable, he said.
Thirty of
the 67 agencies that use the PIT maneuver allow their officers to do so
at any speed; 26 of the agencies have a speed restriction, according to
The Post surveys. Eleven agencies provided no information about whether
they have speed restrictions.
Indiana State Police, for example, prohibit its use at more than 50
mph. State police in Iowa and California limit the PIT to speeds of 35
mph and under.
Many agencies suggest officers receive approval from a supervisor
before performing a PIT. Utah Highway Patrol has a one-paragraph policy
that requires officers who use the PIT to “act within the bounds of
legality, good judgment and accepted practices.”
Georgia State Patrol’s pursuit policy states that the officer should
consider the condition of the road, visibility, pedestrian and vehicle
traffic, the type of vehicle and whether there are passengers in the
fleeing vehicle. The patrol prohibits PITs on motorcycles or ATVs. But
there is no limit on speed, deferring to officers to decide what is
“reasonable.”
Nebraska State Patrol warns against the use of PITs on pickup trucks
with passengers in the cargo area or larger vehicles, but has no limits
on speed.
Some agencies allow officers to PIT over specified speeds only if they believe use of deadly force is justified.
“Some places and legal experts will say a PIT over 55 mph constitutes
the use of deadly force and some will say 45. It’s somewhat arbitrary,”
said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at
the University of South Carolina, and co-author of “Evaluating Police Uses of Force.”
In Albuquerque, police allow officers to PIT vehicles at speeds greater
than 35 mph when they believe deadly force is warranted. That was the
case when police used the maneuver on a Gulf Stream Touring RV.
Shortly after 7 p.m. on June 20, 2017, police tried to arrest David
Barber at an RV park on illegal gun possession and battery charges.
Barber fled in a stolen 26-foot RV, ripping the sewer hose and
electrical cords from their connections and driving through a metal
gate.
At first, police decided not to chase Barber because a police plane was
monitoring the RV from above, Sgt. Albert Sandoval said later in a
deposition. But when Barber nearly hit an officer, Sandoval ordered
police to give chase. For about 45 minutes, and at speeds of up to 70
mph, police chased the RV, which struck at least five vehicles.
After the
RV drove through a busy intersection, an officer pulled alongside it and
touched the front right side of his Ford Expedition to the rear
driver’s side of the RV. He turned his steering wheel to the right.
“The RV did not ‘spin out’ as he expected it would,” according to a
later investigation by police. Instead, “the size and weight of the RV
forced him and the RV across the median and into the southbound lanes of
traffic.”
The officer’s Expedition collided with three other cars, but Barber kept going, driving the RV
over the median and back into the northbound traffic lanes. Another
officer conducted a second PIT on the RV at about 62 mph, records show.
This time the PIT maneuver forced the RV to jump the center median and
strike an oncoming Chevy Malibu. Driving the Malibu was Tito Pacheco, a
single father of three teenagers.
Pacheco died three weeks later from his injuries. His children and
brother sued the Albuquerque police, settling for $500,000, according to
a city spokesperson. Pacheco’s family did not respond to a request for
comment.
Barber was arrested and charged with multiple crimes, including first-degree murder for Pacheco’s death. The case is ongoing.
“If we didn’t do anything to stop him at that time, in that RV, the
chances of him killing somebody were very high,” Sandoval said in a
deposition for the lawsuit, describing his order to stop the RV.
“Once I gave that directive . . . I knew that these officers were going
to utilize their vehicles to strike that vehicle, which could cause
death or great bodily harm to the driver,” he said.
Gilbert Gallegos, an Albuquerque police spokesman, said there have been many policy changes at the department since the crash.
“I’m not aware of any other major incident dealing with PIT maneuvers,”
Gallegos said. “We also have additional driver training for officers
involved in crashes, and we recently got a new driving simulator to help
with training.”
‘I saw at least one other occupant’
In the weeks before Motsinger, the North Carolina Highway Patrol
trooper, used a PIT to stop the minivan full of teens, he had ended two
other pursuits with the tactic. In one, he sent a driver into a ditch at
65 mph and caused $3,300 in damage to his patrol car. He was driving a
loaner vehicle the night he rammed the van, records show.
The teens were on the road that night because Maria Carbajal and her
mother had a fight about Maria’s boyfriend, who lived with her family.
Angry, Maria packed some clothes, took her mother’s van and left home
with her brother Osiel, her boyfriend and another friend.
Teresa Chaparro, Maria and Osiel’s mother, waited to call the police.
She was afraid they would arrest the children. But after two days,
Chaparro went to the Wadesboro police station and talked to an officer,
who sent out an alert that the teens were missing.
The next night, Osiel, who had no license, was driving 70 mph in a 45
mph zone on Highway 74 when Motsinger saw the van speed past and gave
chase.
Osiel pulled over at first, but told The Post that one of the teens in
the car warned: If they get into trouble, they would be arrested.
Everyone told him to go, he said. Osiel sped off. They were only a few
miles from his home.
“I felt like if I could get to where my mom was she could help me,” Osiel said.
Motsinger
asked a dispatcher to contact police ahead and ask if they had “stop
sticks,” spiked strips that could be dropped into the roadway to disable
the van’s tires. No, she replied, according to audio of the radio
conversation.
He asked if he should PIT the van. A supervisor asked if there were other people in the vehicle.
At the time, North Carolina had no speed restriction on PIT maneuvers
used by officers such as Motsinger, who had undergone more extensive
training. But the policy prohibited troopers from using the maneuver if
the fleeing vehicle was believed to be carrying “children or other
innocent passengers.”
“I saw at least one other occupant,” Motsinger said over the radio. “I
don’t know how many.” Motsinger added that traffic was light and the
area was clear.
“You think he’s 55?” the supervisor asked, using police radio code for an intoxicated driver.
Motsinger said he did. The supervisor gave him the go-ahead to PIT.
Seventeen miles into the chase, Motsinger closed in, and his front left
quarter panel caught the back right side of the van. Osiel lost control
and the minivan flipped end over end until it came to rest in the
woods.
The rear
seat of the van, where Maria Carbajal and her boyfriend, Jonathan
Thomas, were sitting, broke free, throwing them from the vehicle. Police
told Chaparro that Maria had died clutching Thomas, who suffered a
broken vertebrae.
A friend, Kandy Castrejon, who had been sitting in the front passenger
seat also was ejected. Castrejon, who liked to make videos of herself
lip-syncing, died a few days later.
A report by the North Carolina Highway Patrol’s Collision
Reconstruction Unit said that the “maneuver was performed correctly in
this crash.”
A North Carolina Highway Patrol spokesperson called the deaths
“tragic,” but declined to comment further on the case. Motsinger could
not be reached for comment and the department declined to make him
available.
Chaparro told The Post that the night of the crash she had been praying
in church and gotten a chill, and knew Maria was in trouble. When she
got home, her youngest daughter said that the teens had stopped by the
house, but were scared they were in trouble and again left. She was
getting ready for bed after midnight when the call came about the crash.
When
she arrived at the hospital, she saw teams of doctors huddled around a
thin girl and recognized Kandy Castrejon’s mother nearby. In the next
room she saw Thomas, Maria’s boyfriend. She went to the final room and
saw her son Osiel sitting up on a table.
Osiel asked about his sister. But she was already dead.
After the
crash, the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation reviewed
Motsinger’s use of the PIT and turned the findings over to the State
Attorney General’s Office, which cleared Motsinger of any wrongdoing.
“It appears that all viable means of stopping the vehicle had been
exhausted and the likelihood of serious injury or fatality to the public
remained a major concern prior to Trooper Motsinger’s decision to
utilize the PIT as a means to disable the vehicle,” the attorney
general’s office wrote in a February 2018 letter about its decision.
“Trooper Motsinger was forced to make a split second judgment about the
amount of force necessary in a situation that was very tense, uncertain and rapidly evolving.”
The families of Maria and Kandy sued the state, alleging that Motsinger
used excessive force, was reckless, and violated department policies.
Motsinger, they contended, should have been aware that four teens were
in the van. The case was settled in May for an undisclosed amount,
records show.
Thomas said that after the crash he began to have haunting flashes of his friends flying around inside the van.
He said he was overcome with regret for not doing more to stop Osiel
from speeding away when they were stopped. Osiel was charged with a
felony for eluding police and later pleaded guilty to a juvenile charge,
according to attorneys who represent the family. Osiel was not
intoxicated, the lawyers said.
“It does not make sense to me that the police did that,” Thomas said.
“Why would you PIT maneuver a car over 100 mph? What did you accomplish
in this? You killed two innocent people who had their whole life ahead
of them because someone else decided to speed off.”
As a result of the crash, the North Carolina Highway Patrol in July
2017 revised its policy on the use of PIT: Troopers are not allowed to
PIT vehicles at more than 55 mph unless the fleeing driver has committed
a felony or the use of deadly force is warranted.
Chaparro said she regrets calling the police.
“They did not need to kill my child,” she said. “For what?” she asked through a translator. “I had not realized that Saturday when we went to work that it would be the last time I would talk to my daughter.”
3 comments:
I was under the impression PIT was intended to be a low to moderate speed maneuver. Of course I have never been trained in it, so I don't know for sure. Perhaps the best move would have been for those persons fleeing from the cops to STOP.
Ya Bob...but some obviously think that cops should just shrug and turn away from a reckless, speeding, stolen vehicle.
It appears that almost 1/2 the people killed are either innocent bystanders or passengers in the vehicle being chased. That doesn't seem like a logical tactic if true.
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