A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Car chases are so pointless. Trace the plates and wait at thier home. Track the millions of cameras in the city and go to thier location. Im sure there's more non-violent methods than those they can use too.
The above is assuming police actually want to create a safer environment for everyone, though. Unfortunately its a lot more fun for them to Judge Dredd every possible encounter.
There's been cloned plates, and no plates. Still, safest is helicopter tracking them down.
Track the millions of cameras in the city and go to thier location.
Helicopters are another good non-violent solution, too.
Drones would be even better.
Years and years ago they showed how they can sticky-bomb a gps tracker onto the car. Where’s that tech? It’s probably dirt fuckin cheap. But these ~~people~~ cops can’t help but want to be the star of their very own renegade cop action flick
They would be, maybe. That takes away the adrenaline rush though.
Like shooting, car violence is fun (is what I can deduct from these headlines).
It also keeps the plebs in check reminding them they are nothing & should carry on living with a constant but vague sense of fear & anxiety about existing within their class.
I agree about the car chases, but we also just saw in real life that the surveillance state in NYC is nowhere near where we might assume it was.
A man assassinated a CEO in broad daylight in Midtown, fled on foot and bicycle, and was able to disappear completely in minutes. The supposed suspect was only found by sheer luck at a McDonald's in a different state.
The issue is if the driver can get out of sight of all cameras/helicopters and leave the vehicle. Then there's no proof they were actually driving and could claim the vehicle was stolen or something.
Which is preferable to running down an innocent person in a pointless chase. Where's the issue, exactly?
That's not comparable lol? You do realise it's possible for police to give chase without endangering the surrounding people?
If it's a common occurrence that innocents are being endangered by police chases then the police are obviously to be blamed for dangerous pursuits.
My former comment was simply stating the reason why police give chase at all, instead of letting everyone off the hook if they feel like not stopping. Not really sure why people are downvoting...
You say "the issue is the person could get out of sight of cameras". Meaning they potentially get away with a crime.
The implication is that you want these chases to continue.
My point is, I'd RATHER see the person go free than even POTENTIALLY run the risk of a high speed chase that necessarily endangers people not involved.
That's why you're getting downvoted. You're implying you want high speed chases.
This completely depends on the ratios and the crimes and a lot of other factors. What if the person fleeing is a suspected murderer? I'd rather see a police chase potentially endangering innocents than allowing someone definitely endangering innocents walk free.
Another example, which is very common, is that the person fleeing is under the influence of some drug. Allowing that person to drive off is also endangering innocents, sometimes more and sometimes less than a police chase would.
My point is that police chases are not something you can just get rid of completely and think you're protecting the public. But I agree with the purpose of the article, if there has been a huge increase in dangerous police chases after some change in leadership, it's very likely that the police are to blame for bad decision making on whether to give chase or not.
Again, as I said before, my original comment was replying to the idea of never giving chase and always trying to catch them later, which is not always the best option.
What if the person fleeing is a suspected murderer?
An innocent person you mean ?
Except that it is always the better option. There is NO scenario where having two insane people running around in 2 ton vehicles is better than one. Let the person go, get a helicopter following him (it should be easy if he's driving erratically) and apprehend when he inevitably stops. Police have resources besides sheer brute force, they should use THOSE rather than the gun and the police chase.
So you're saying a police giving chase is always as dangerous a driver as someone drunk beyond their ears? And a 10 min chase ending in a crash is always worse than someone driving around for an hour potentially running over several times more people only to then crash either way?
Of course in most cases I agree brute force is not the correct option, but there are situations where it's needed.