For many months I’ve been working with ANDREA BALL, an investigative reporter at the Houston Chronicle. She and other HC staff have done / and continue to dig into Houston’s HORRIBLE #PoliceChase actions and outcomes.
This has turned into a multi-part series which YOU REALLY NEED TO READ – their findings are amazing and frightening.
Here are the first 4 stories. I’ll continue to post as they publish more.
Jonathan Farris, Chief Advocate, Pursuit For Change
11/2/2023
@andreeball @houstonchron
HPD’s loose policy enables rise in high-speed chases that killed bystanders
High-speed chases launched by the Houston Police Department increased 47 percent over a five-year period, killing more than two dozen people and injuring hundreds more, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found.
Between Jan. 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2022, officers engaged in 6,303 chases. Twenty-seven people died during those pursuits, and at least 740 people were injured.
At least 240 of the dead and injured were bystanders, including a man who’d just left a grocery store, a man walking to get a haircut and a Lyft driver with a passenger in his car.
To document the toll high-speed chases are taking citywide, the Chronicle analyzed more than 5,000 post-pursuit forms filled out by officers, filed a dozen-plus public information requests and spoke to family members of bystanders who were killed.
Read the rest of the story is here:
HPD to halt police chases for certain offenses in major change aimed at safety
Members of the Houston Police Department and Houston Fire Departments work the scene of a fatal accident after a police chase involving two suspect in a stolen vehicle ended at Martin Luther King Boulavard and Ben Fleet Street, Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, in Houston. Gloria Collins, the mother of an HPD sergeant, died. Two others were injured.
Houston’s police chief unveiled sweeping changes to the department’s vehicle pursuit policy Thursday that might have prevented hundreds of crashes, had those changes been made earlier.
From 2018 through 2022, eight people died and 137 were injured after officers chased 2,200 drivers suspected only of traffic violations or failing to stop for police. Now, those practices are banned, Chief Troy Finner said.
“We’ve got to do even better, and the system as a whole has to do better,” the chief said.
HPD will also stop chasing people suspected of having traffic or nonviolent misdemeanor warrants, although supervisors can continue to approve chases of suspects in ongoing investigations and people driving vehicles with stolen license plates, no plates or plates that belong on another vehicle.
Read the rest of the story is here:
HPD sees high-speed chases plunge 40% after Chief Troy Finner implements tighter policies
High-speed chases initiated by Houston police have dropped 40 percent in the month since Police Chief Troy Finner tightened pursuit policies, the chief told members of the City Council on Wednesday.
Chase-related collisions also dropped 35 percent this month compared with the monthly average so far this year, Finner said.
Finner said the department was “forced to change the policy” due to a steady increase of pursuits and pursuit-related crashes, injuries and deaths over the past year. So far in October, there have been 46 pursuits reported, according to data provided to council members. There were 132 pursuits in August, the last full month before the changes were made Sept. 14.
“In this city, violent individuals commit crimes in those vehicles,” he said. “So we can’t just abandon the pursuits. But we are working smart.”
Finner said the new policy has also led to more successful pursuit terminations. Over the past month alone, pursuits terminations have increased by 35 percent, he said.
Read the rest of the story is here:
A police chase plowed over an innocent bystander. Scorched and mangled, now he wants answers.
Courtney Lane lifted his heavy eyelids for the first time in two days.
He slowly scanned the room for clues. Medical bed. Clear tubes in his veins. Fresh white bandages bulged from his arms, legs, shoulder and chest.
Sitting in traffic on his motorcycle on Feb. 21, waiting for the light to change. The banging of metal. The flaming gas tank. The Honda Accord dragging him 150 feet up North Houston Rosslyn Road as it bashed its way through traffic, with police in pursuit.
The hovering helicopter. The anxious medic. Then nothing.
Sarah Stevens (photos from Boston25 News)
The heartache always 
