Should Fort Worth police have pursued driver in West 7th chase? What the experts say

The Fort Worth police’s internal affairs division may have to investigate whether officers followed the department’s pursuit policy after a high-speed chase Saturday ended with two pedestrians suffering serious injuries, according to law enforcement policy experts.

The Star-Telegram spoke with two university experts in policing and public administration and asked them to analyze the patrol car dashboard video based on excerpts of the department’s vehicle pursuit policy revealed in court documents recently obtained by the newspaper.

The city of Fort Worth has sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in an attempt to block the release of the policy after his office ordered it be made public. The Star-Telegram has made several requests for the policy.

The policy contains apparently conflicting language with regard to one action taken by the officer who initiated the pursuit, according to Alejandro del Carmen, associate dean of the School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Public Administration at Tarleton State University.

At the beginning of the chase, the officer follows the driver, who is believed to have been impaired at the time of the chase, the wrong way on Foch Street for about a half a block before turning eastbound on West Seventh Street.

Policy dated 2019 included in a 2020 wrongful death lawsuit states that under “no circumstances are Fort Worth officers permitted to travel contrary to the flow of traffic.” That prohibition, however, is not intended to prevent officers from temporarily driving on the wrong side of the road to safely maneuver around stopped traffic at an intersection or other obstructions,” the document states.

“The internal affairs unit will have to weigh in on two aspects of the policy,” Del Carmen said in an email exchange.

Internal affairs will have to determine whether the officer went against the flow of traffic to get around stopped cars or “other obstructions,” he said.

“From the information drawn from the video, the traffic flow seems to be active and no vehicles seem to be stopped at the time the officer engages the suspect in an active pursuit while driving against traffic,” Del Carmen said.

Despite this analysis, Del Carmen told the Star-Telegram that he agreed with the officer’s decision to initiate the pursuit.

The officer’s decision to go against traffic was likely in line with the department’s pursuit policy, according to Johnny Nhan, a professor at TCU’s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Nhan is also a reserve Fort Worth police officer and patrols about once a week.

“Generally speaking, if they’re just kind of following the person, they could probably follow behind them,” he said in a phone interview. “Considering the totality of the circumstances, I don’t see that as something that somebody would get in trouble for.”

The pursuing officer has lots of room to make decisions based on his or her analysis of the situation, he said. “Once the lights and sirens are on, there’s a lot more leeway into how an officer can drive.”

Like Del Carmen, Nhan considered the officer to be justified in his decision to start the chase, and said that officers tend to favor chases over other tactics.

But there are other tactics the police can utilize instead of a high-speed chase. Nhan said that there are alternatives to high-speed chases.

“We’ll put a warrant out and then we’ll get them later under a more controlled circumstance, and then that warrant might be served by like a SWAT team,” he said. “So there are alternatives to that.”

Nhan also mentioned other large metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles, that have constant helicopter monitoring to allow patrol cars to hang back while tracking a subject from above. Dallas-Fort Worth, however, does not have this kind of surveillance.

While he refrained from commenting directly on the Fort Worth Police Department’s pursuit policy, citing his status as a reserve officer, he said that it is comparatively more conservative than other departments in the region.

“That’s not to say that they can’t follow behind and keep an eye out on somebody, but it’s pretty common that chases do get called off,” Nhan said.

Officers must balance their decision to initiate a pursuit against the potential danger of allowing the person to go free momentarily, he said.

Chases are generally considered to be a deterrent to crime, but the data does not clearly show this correlation, Nhan said.

“But the chances of injury and death definitely build up with a pursuit, so I think the city and the department are trying to balance that out,” he said.