7 February 15 - 21, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents trade agreements with those two countries, Hand said. Sadly for millennials, iPhones and avocados would likely be in short supply for a time. Texas would need to lock down cell ser- vice as well, Hand said. Sure, AT&T is head- quartered here, but Texas the Country™ would need to secure treaties to import items like phone chargers and wireless rout- ers and — well, you get the point. “Texas’s Secretary of State would also have to figure out how to print passports and negotiate visa regimes with the US and Mexico, too,” Hand said. “Until that hap- pened, Texans would have to cross the bor- der illegally to visit family in Louisiana or escape the heat next August.” Crossing the border illegally, huh? Ah, the irony. ▼ PUBLIC SAFETY HOT PURSUIT, NOT PURSUIT NORTH TEXAS POLICE ENGAGE IN A SURPRISING NUMBER OF HIGH-SPEED CHASES. BY KELLY DEARMORE T he Woodall Rodgers Freeway over- pass near downtown Dallas was shut down for much of the morning on Feb. 1 after a car carrying four passengers went over the side of the ramp and crashed below, killing all four at the scene. The Dallas County Medical Examiner named the four individuals involved as Sa- bria Lacey, DeAvion Aubert, Robert Gowans Jr. and Anthony Lisbon. Ranging in age from 21 to 22 years, the group was evading Irving police in a stolen vehicle. Irving police released dashcam footage showing the stolen vehicle speeding up the ramp and then bursting into flames after it fell. NBC 5 reported that “officers with the Dallas Police, Dallas County Sheriff’s Office and Dallas Fire-Rescue all arrived and tried to provide first aid to the occupants of the stolen vehicle.” This month, CBS 11 reported that Irving police have been involved in more than 500 chases since 2018, and that many of them evolved into high-speed affairs. “Records also show more than one in ev- ery four Irving police chases reached or ex- ceeded 100 mph. “Out of the 515 Irving police chases since 2018, only one time was an officer disci- plined for failing to follow the department’s pursuit policy. The officer was suspended by the department, according to police re- cords.” The Dallas Morning News recently re- ported on the aftermath of a police chase gone wrong when a father and his 3-year-old son were seriously injured during a Garland police pursuit in which they were not the suspects. The report says the injuries re- sulted from “a terrifying accident caused by what appears to be a violation of Garland’s police pursuit policy.” Also in Garland, another police chase ended when 32-year-old officer Joe Tsai was killed in pursuit of a vehicle with a fake pa- per license tag in November. We reached out to several of the largest police departments in North Texas, includ- ing Dallas, Arlington, Plano, Frisco, Fort Worth, Denton and Carrollton, for more about their pursuit policies and to deter- mine how many chases their officers have been involved in over the past few years. Some departments asked us to file an open records request for both pieces of info (which we did), while others asked us to file that request for just the stats. Some other departments, however, filled us in on both their pursuit policy and the number of chases their offices have been involved in recently. From 2022 until now, Dallas Police De- partment officers have pursued more than 180 chases: 90 in 2022, 89 in 2023 and three so far this year. According to the DPD’s General Orders an officer may engage in a chase only under certain conditions, including “when the offi- cer has probable cause to believe that a fel- ony involving the use or threat of physical force or violence has been, or is about to be, committed,” among a number of other cir- cumstances. Should a Dallas officer see “a suspect discharge a firearm in a public place or display a firearm in a public place in a threatening manner,” a chase can be en- gaged. From 2018 to 2022, Arlington police offi- cers engaged in 342 chases (numbers for 2023 haven’t been posted yet). According to the annual pursuit analysis report the de- partment publishes, the vast majority of Ar- lington police chases are due to suspected felonies or suspected DWIs. In 2022 alone, there were 63 police chases in Arlington, with 15 ending in the suspect voluntarily stopping and 13 ending in a collision. The re- maining chases in 2022 ended because of of- ficer or supervisor decisions. A spokesperson for the Arlington Police Department said it does not release its gen- eral orders, but that the department requires serious discretion in this area. “Our agency has one of the stricter pur- suit policies here in the region,” the spokes- person explained via email. “It lays out very specific conditions that must be met for an APD officer to initiate a pursuit. It also gives officers and their supervisors flexibility to terminate pursuits if they feel it is no longer safe or prudent for the pursuit to continue.” Fort Worth would provide neither the police policy for pursuits nor any statistics regarding chases, but KERA reported this week that Cowtown cops have been kept rather busy with chases on its roads in re- cent years. “Over the past six years, nearly 1 of out every 3 Fort Worth Police Department car chases have caused a crash,” the KERA re- port stated. “Fort Worth officers initiated 1,331 pursuits from 2017 to 2022, for an aver- age of four chases a week, according to data from the department’s use of force reports analyzed by the Fort Worth Report. Of those, 432 resulted in an accident.” Police chases are a hot topic across all of Texas, and especially near the border where Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s contro- versial and costly border security plan, Operation Lone Star, looms large. In No- vember 2023, Human Rights Watch pub- lished a 77-page report noting that the “program led to crashes that killed at least 74 people and injured at least another 189 in a 29-month period.” Year, You! New New 15% OFF NEW SERVICE DALLAS PLANO 214.987.1919 JOHNNYRODRIGUEZSALON.COM ®
