Just on the heels of the FBI essentially shrugging off pressure to pin real numbers of police killings of U.S. citizens – a report finds that deaths of people during police high-speed pursuits are drastically under-reported.
USA Today reports on another aspect that often goes forgotten when it comes to safety and law enforcement. How frequently do people get injured or die when police go on high-speed pursuits? Is the frequency increasing? Decreasing? Is it being taken seriously or for granted?
The USA Today investigation believes that the number of traffic deaths caused by police high-speed pursuits is weakly tracked by an off-shoot of the Department of Transportation and under-reported potentially by thousands.
They found:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration overlooked at least 101 motor-vehicle deaths in 2013 that were related to a police chase, according to a USA TODAY review of police reports and internal documents, court records, police-car videos and news accounts based on police statements. NHTSA’s count of 322 chase-related deaths in 2013 — the most recent year for which its records are publicly available — understates the total by at least 31%, the investigation shows.
NHTSA’s undercount suggests that the actual number of people killed in police chases since 1979 could be more than 15,000 — far more than the 11,506 chase-related deaths found in the agency’s public records — and that chases result in a death much more frequently than studies have stated.
Incredible. There could be more, because USA Today found this data by searching Internet and news databases. They found that about one-fourth of people who died during high-speed pursuits were innocent bystanders, and another one-fourth were passengers in the cars of those that were fleeing police.
When there is talk of people shirking their duties under the law as a public servant – let’s not forget this egregious defiance of the law by the government.
Amanda Warren writes for Activist Post – see her recent articles HERE
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