Kick pursuit training into overdrive

Oct. 15, 2014

Kick pursuit training into overdrive

The forethought, tools, and tenacity required to develop safer emergency vehicle drivers

Lt. Steve Westerberg remembers one particular day when he put pedal to the metal in the wee morning hours.
He was sitting in a 1988 Chevrolet Caprice in an area off of a main highway with his field training officer in the passenger seat. “I heard the unmistakable sounds of a large-block V-8 accelerating. At 2:00 am the area was devoid of any kind of traffic except for this scofflaw in his 1970’s Pontiac Trans Am,” he says.
The Trans Am tore past Westerberg’s stationary position in excess of 75 mph and continued to accelerate. Newbie Westerberg pulled onto the highway behind the vehicle and activated his emergency equipment to initiate a traffic stop.
“The patrol car did not have anti-lock brakes, traction control, or many of the other safety technologies we have in 2014, however it would not have mattered in this instance,” he says. “After one-half to three-quarters of a mile in my attempt to overtake the violator I was directed to disengage from the pursuit by the field training officer. Initially I was furious with his decision—I was a recent graduate of the academy, viewed myself as an above average vehicle operator, and knew the pursuit was within agency policy.
“I learned a critical lesson that night about the relationship between training, technology, policy, and decision-making under stress,” he says.

The game of cat and mouse


It’s a question still asked today by officers on patrol and their supervisors: When a pursuit is warranted…and when to pull the plug? A chase over roads riddled with civilian cars and people can go south fast, and a number of factors decide how to train for, sustain and safely terminate a pursuit.
According to PursuitSAFETY, a national nonprofit organization committed to reducing the number of deaths and injuries as a result of vehicular police pursuit and response call crashes, 35 to 40 percent of all vehicular police pursuits end in a collision. Of those, 50 percent of pursuit collisions occur in the first two minutes of the pursuit, and more than 70 percent of all collisions occur before the sixth minute of the pursuit. Reasons to pursue include (in order of most common to least): traffic violations, stolen vehicles, suspected DWI, violent felony, non-violent felony, other misdemeanors and assisting other departments.
Captain Thomas Gleason knows what it’s like from both seats—as the officer behind the wheel and the supervisor behind the desk making the decisions. He started out in Alabama, working city, county and state, and eventually coordinating at a police academy. Like Westerberg, Gleason remembers early on in his career when a car ran from him at one in the morning with a taillight out. That time, no one told him to disengage. “We went over 100 miles per hour and it wound up he hit another patrol car; put that officer in the hospital, and rolled, and had two injuries in that. It’s one of those things that, when I look back, was it worth the pursuit?
“It really made me take a second look and I was a young officer, only like 20 years old. I was within the guidelines at that time, but we didn’t have a pursuit policy. If they ran from us…we chased them.”
Fast forward a few decades. Today some agencies will not allow a pursuit to continue if it is not a forcible felony. As a trainer, Gleason thinks this is good policy.
It is the supervisor who is generally tasked with coolly announcing road conditions, speeds, the charges, and decides whether to allow the pursuit to continue or terminate it. As a sergeant on the street Gleason made sure he was not personally attached. “The decision I would be making for that officer would be a decision that he would make maybe 24 hours after the pursuit. The supervisor is a big, big part of that decision-making, because he’s the independent person.”
Now Gleason is retired from law enforcement and serves on PursuitSAFETY’s advisory board. In 2000 Gleason lost his son, a military police officer, to a traffic collision at Fort Polk, Louisiana. “The driver of that MP car was going in excess of 85 mph when they left the road and overturned, and my son died in the accident. I couldn’t help but think there was a training issue there, or if somebody had done a little better job of training and making him aware of that 3,000-pound bomb that they’ve got out there, maybe that could have been avoided. Because not only did it destroy my son’s life, but the MP’s that was driving the car...it destroyed his life, too.”
Since that time, he is passionate and outspoken on the topic of pursuits and pursuit training.
“Any time either a police officer’s injured or dies, or a civilian is injured or dies, or a suspect, then it is a big problem.”
He says liability is always a concern, but the other part of it is simply doing the right thing. To reduce that risk officers need to be trained well and understand policies. To add to that, policies should be written, updated and reviewed with officers…Gleason recommends yearly, at least.
After-action reports ensure managers and officers look at the chain of events with a critical set of eyes, “Not looking for things we’ve done wrong or right, but looking at what we can do to improve, or if everything’s like what it should have been,” he says. “Our agency policy actually said if the first-line supervisor decided to terminate that pursuit, then he would not be second-judged by anybody.” He adds that good policies spell out precisely those types of things. Agencies that review policies note items like the reasons they are doing the pursuits, and ways to improve. In his opinion, things are already improving.

That new car feel

Since that day in the 80’s Lt. Westerberg, now a tactical training coordinator with Department of Public Safety, Standards & Training in Salem, Oregon, says he’s also witnessed improvements in how officers engage in pursuit activity, the management of those situations as they develop, and the technologies available for both vehicle operations and the termination of pursuits. A lot of factors have led to these careful changes.
For one, new vehicles in the market demand a slightly different course of training—think the new Dodge Chargers, Ford Interceptors, Chevy Caprices, and pursuit-rated Explorers—to show officers how to slow themselves down.
“The cars are fabulous. What’s really interesting, is even the lowest horsepower, smallest motor new car, has 45 or 50 more horsepower than the old Crown Vic had on a very, very good day,” says Dane Pitaressi, president of SkidCar Inc. The cars are lighter and faster, and electronic control systems allow drivers to go faster than ever.
“The new cars present speed in a very different way, and it’s quite invisible to the driver how fast they’re going,” says Pitaressi. His company began offering an electronic control stability workshop in 2012 to address these idiosyncrasies. “It’s not like you have to change a lot, but not doing anything at all is just libelous.” He adds, “By no means do I think these systems are bad; I think these systems are going to save a hell of a lot of people, in law enforcement and the public. But they need to be trained in what they are and how to drive with them. Specifically for high speed use.”
Jeff Eggleston, Senior Law Enforcement Training Officer at the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy (OPOTA) says the industry is focused on getting officers to understand that the new police platforms are equipped with technology to help them control the vehicles. And if they don’t understand that, they’re going to end up fighting the car. He is also looking into how this new tech will affect pursuit termination (PIT) training. “What’s the cruiser going to do during a PIT technique, and how will the technique affect a violator vehicle equipped with the same technology?” A 2007 study with the Society of American Engineers (SAE) indicated cruisers may need to increase speeds to successfully execute PIT maneuvers.
Newer models may ‘gray out’ that sensation you get in an older car when driving on ice or snow. “The car is invisibly controlling your mistakes so the vehicles are not only lighter and faster and better handling, more horsepower and all that…but the driver can’t talk to the vehicle and the vehicle is not communicating with the driver to tell the driver what it needs to stay in control. And it’s typical,” says Eggleston.
When trainers introduce aids like skid pads or SkidCar, drivers get a feel for how a vehicle will actually react at slow or high speeds. The key, says Eggleston, is teaching control, not speed. “We’re telling students now to drive the car so the technology does not engage. We tell officers to slow down rather than go fast. It’s better to arrive and get there in an expedient manner, but not going so fast to where there may be a crash, a skid, or go off the roadway.”
Both Westerberg and Eggleston agree, when analog brakes were new “Not only did the general public not understand them, they probably still don’t. But police didn’t, either,” says Eggleston. It’s up to trainers to stay ahead of new developments and then figure out how to put that information into class material.
Mandated safety technologies like electronic stability control change how drivers act and react. “ESC technologies are so complex and are evolving so rapidly that we are in a constant state of research in the training environment to assure that our materials and exercises are still relevant,” says Westerberg. He predicts that in the next three to five years few vehicles will remain on the highways that are not equipped with at least five-generation stability control. The potential for greater speeds will increase. “Unfortunately as both criminals attempting to elude capture and police officers travel faster in pursuits, the risks will increase—we remind recruit drivers that going faster doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than you will crash at a higher rate of speed,” he says.
Classroom and in-car sessions prepare a recruit for the days when their patrol cruiser is their main tool—mobile office, method of transport and defensive mechanism. Typical training aids like high speed courses, simulators and skid pans come at a cost, but then their use is meant to protect both officers and civilians, and even prevent lawsuits down the road.
While the danger associated with emergency response driving will likely never go away, looking at training from a holistic approach can help to form a well-rounded plan of action so everyone is safer when a new officer slides into the driver’s seat…or when an old(er) officer slides into the seat of a new patrol car.  ■

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