[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 407-408]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          HIGH-SPEED PURSUITS

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, in this morning's Los Angeles Times there 
was a story headlined ``Border Pursuit Crash Kills Two, Hurts 
Thirteen''.
  The paper reported that 2 women were killed and 13 people were 
injured--7 of them critically--when a pickup truck full of suspected 
illegal immigrants overturned, after a pursuit by the Border Patrol. 
The 15-year-old truck was packed with people huddled under a tarp as it 
sped west on Interstate 8.
  That pickup truck apparently smashed into a guardrail and overturned 
sending bodies tumbling down an embankment. According to the California 
Highway Patrol, two women were pronounced dead at the scene 20 miles 
north of the U.S.-Mexican border. Seven victims were taken to local 
hospitals in critical condition, and six other people with minor to 
moderate injuries.
  The issue of high-speed pursuit by law enforcement officials is not 
new. In fact, on Tuesday of this week, the Los Angeles Police 
Department announced that they were severely restricting circumstances 
in which officers could engage in high-speed pursuits, following a 
series of deadly crashes in that city involving fleeing vehicles.
  Los Angeles has become known as the car chase capital of the world. 
We have all seen the helicopters following police chases on live 
television. In 2001, the Los Angeles Police Department launched 781 
pursuits. One-hundred and thirty-nine people were injured. Six people 
died in those pursuits. Fifty-nine percent of the police pursuits in 
Los Angeles resulted from minor traffic infractions.
  According to the Border Patrol, in 1996, 8 illegal immigrants were 
killed and 19 were injured when their vehicle tumbled into a ditch as 
part of a high-speed pursuit by the Border Patrol. There is a list of 
such cases.
  Look, this is not the fault of law enforcement officials. It is the 
fault of the people who are fleeing law enforcement officials. But we 
ought to have policies and training on high-speed pursuits, to make 
sure pursuit is appropriate. In cases where we have minor infractions, 
in cases where there is no imminent danger, we ought not have chases at 
60-, 80-, or 100-mile miles per hour, in which innocent people get 
killed.
  Today I am writing to the head of the Border Patrol asking for an 
investigation into what happened yesterday. I want to understand what 
kind of pursuit policies the Border Patrol uses, and what kind of 
pursuit policies and training they have.
  This is happening too often. I think more law enforcement ought to 
follow the model of Los Angeles.
  I have a personal interest in this issue. My mother was killed in a 
high-speed police chase. She was driving home from a hospital one night 
about 9 o'clock in the evening on a quiet street in Bismark, ND. A 
couple of drunks driving a pickup truck fishtailed. Witnesses said the 
police were chasing them at 80 to 100 miles an hour, down a city street 
in Bismark, ND. There was a crash. My mother was an innocent victim.
  Three-hundred to four-hundred people a year in this country suffer 
that fate; some say up to 1,000.
  This is not some mysterious illness for which we don't know a cure. 
We understand what causes the death of innocent people with respect to 
police pursuits. We understand how to stop it.
  I believe if there is a bank robbery and guns are blazing and a 
getaway car is moving, the police ought to chase

[[Page 408]]

and ought to pursue because they have no choice. The public is 
desperately endangered in that circumstance. But such chases are 
inappropriate in many other circumstances.
  I have spent a lot of time on this issue in recent years. I remember 
talking to a county sheriff in North Dakota about this issue. He said: 
Just last week we had a police pursuit. We started this pursuit, and 
one of my deputies saw someone horribly drunk weaving all over the 
road. He began immediately to apprehend this person. The person took 
off at a high rate of speed, and my deputy saw two little children in 
the backseat of that car and immediately disengaged. We got the license 
number. We didn't chase. We arrested that person about 3 hours later 
and those children were safe.
  If they had not made that judgment call, perhaps that would have 
resulted in a car crash and the death of those children.
  I mentioned my family's acquaintance with this issue in a deadly way. 
Here are some other examples, which occurred recently in Los Angeles. 
In March of 2002, Henry and Anna Polivoda, 79 and 76 years old, were 
struck and killed by a fleeing suspect in a pursuit that began over a 
car registration. Henry and Anna were Holocaust survivors, but they 
couldn't survive a high-speed pursuit on a city street. They were 
innocent victims of that pursuit.
  A couple of months after that, a 4-year-old girl was killed when an 
auto theft suspect ran a red light on a busy downtown street, causing a 
chain reaction that knocked over a traffic light, killing the girl.
  This goes on and on and on.
  Yesterday's incident is one I know very little about--only that which 
I read in the newspaper. Of course, it brought back to me some very sad 
memories.
  I know that those who were attempting to smuggle illegal immigrants 
into this country yesterday are ultimately at fault. I know those 
smugglers who decided not to stop when the Border Patrol tried to 
apprehend them are at fault.
  But I also know this requires us, once again, to review when it is 
appropriate for us to engage in high-speed police pursuits and when it 
is inappropriate.
  I have undying admiration for the work law enforcement officers do 
every day and every night. While we lie safely in our beds at night, 
there are people patrolling our streets and keeping us safe. They 
deserve our enormous admiration for the work they do. It is dangerous 
and difficult.
  But I only ask this: How many more crashes, how many more deaths will 
it take for this country--all of us--to decide that in some 
circumstances it is inappropriate for law enforcement to engage in 
high-speed chases?
  I know a city police chief from a southern State. His daughter is 
dead as a result of a high-speed police chase. Now, this is a police 
chief. This is a law enforcement official. His daughter was killed in a 
chase that occurred as a result of a broken taillight. That broken 
taillight was a cause for law enforcement to want to stop the vehicle. 
The vehicle did not stop. It took off at a high rate of speed. Because 
of that broken taillight, the police pursued, and the police chief's 
daughter was killed--an innocent bystander at an intersection down the 
road.
  And it is always the innocent bystander who is killed. The drunk 
driver who killed my mother had almost no injuries, as is almost always 
the case with drunks. He was fleeing from the police. It was his fault. 
But in the circumstance I described with my mother, in that community, 
they did not have the kind of training I think they needed with respect 
to police pursuit. I think that is the case in many communities around 
the country.
  Today, I say to the police chief in Los Angeles: Good for you. Thanks 
for the announcement you made on Tuesday, to decide to restrict police 
pursuit and high-speed chases to circumstances where they are 
essential.
  We do not need to be entertained on a television network by having a 
helicopter following a chase. That ought not be what entertains the 
American people. Police chases are appropriate and necessary in certain 
circumstances. But in other circumstances they are killing innocent 
Americans.
  So what I wanted to say today is this: There have been too many 
examples with the Border Patrol of high-speed pursuits in which people 
are being killed, especially on Interstate 8. I think it is time for us 
to take a look at what is going on. I am going to ask the head of the 
Border Patrol to investigate this and report to us exactly what 
happened.
  I want the head of the Border Patrol, and all other Federal law 
enforcement authorities, to tell us about their policies and training 
with respect to high-speed law enforcement pursuit.
  I am not suggesting they should not be able to pursue; I am saying 
they need training and policies that determine when it is appropriate 
and when it is not.
  Mr. President, this is always a painful subject for me. I have been 
dealing with it for a long while.
  There are of course many others who have also been dealing with this. 
There was a wonderful woman in the State of Wyoming who lost a loved 
one to a high-speed police pursuit. She created a national organization 
called STOP, to deal with the problem. She and many other people who 
suffered and whose loved ones suffered as a result of being on the 
wrong end of a police pursuit--an innocent victim--tried very hard to 
make progress in requiring uniform policies and uniform training in 
this area. I am sorry to say that she died of cancer some while ago.
  I hope we will make more progress than we have in the past. We have 
made some progress in some areas, but not nearly enough. Yesterday's 
incident--this morning's news--I think reflects that once again.
  I do not come here assigning blame with respect to the incident 
yesterday. Clearly, the ultimate blame lies with the smugglers who 
decided not to stop when law enforcement authorities tried to apprehend 
them. But I want to know if perhaps policies which allow chases in 
certain circumstances are also contributing to the death of innocent 
people. If that is the case, we need to ask law enforcement to better 
train their officers, and create better policies.
  So I will send a letter today and call the head of the Border Patrol 
and ask for this investigation. I will share with my colleagues the 
results of it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alabama.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I believe we are in morning business 
with Senators allowed to speak for up to 10 minutes each.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

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