San Antonio — Police Chase on West Side
Posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2019 at 11:44 pm
At about 11:45 p.m. on Tuesday, January 22, 2019, there was a car crash that occurred on the West Side in San Antonio following a police car chase.
According to the reports, troopers with the Texas Department of Public Safety were chasing an unidentified suspect near Interstate 10 and West Avenue when the suspect suddenly crashed into an SUV.
The troopers were able to remove the suspect from his car and arrested him.
Paramedics arrived at the scene to check the female driver of the SUV for injuries.
It is great news that no one seems to seriously injured in this accident. But unfortunately, not everyone is lucky. Police car chases are not uncommon in the United States; in 2012, an estimate of 68,000 vehicle pursuits was reported. In addition to that, it is also common for police chases to end in death or injury. In fact, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, from 1996 to 2015, an average of 355 people — about 1 person per day — were killed every year in pursuit-related accidents. A third of that number are innocent bystanders, which suggests that police chases kill more people every year than tornadoes, lightning, and hurricanes combined, and a USA Today investigation has reported that chases kill black people – both as innocent bystanders and as the target of the pursuit — 3 times more than anybody else.
Back in 2015, the Washington Post reported that police chases are almost always excessive; about 91% of police pursuits are in response to non-violent crimes, like shoplifting and the like. To explain this, retired police Captain Tom Gleason said that most police chases start just because the officer is incensed by the target, and as a result, he would get into this mindset of “I have to catch him.” This excessiveness of the police chase nature is what moved many police departments to have policies for it, which is great news. Hopefully, the statistics for pursuit-related accidents will now go down.
If you are a victim of this kind of accident, or you know someone who is, or you lost a loved one because of this, then don’t lose hope. There will always be help available to you, in the form of car accident lawyers and personal injury lawyers.
