The San Diego Police Department indicated that it would not adopt restrictive pursuit policies recommended by the city’s oversight board last year in the wake of multiple police chases that resulted in fatalities, including the deaths of a police officer and two young boys.
In November, the Commission on Police Practices recommended that the department change its policies to limit when pursuits could be initiated. The board suggested pursuits should not be justified for suspected infractions, property offenses, misdemeanors, traffic violations or non-violent warrants.
The recommendations marked one of the first major initiatives undertaken by the commission since its inception. Along with the suggested revisions to the pursuit justifications, the recommendations also included changes to certain language contained in the policies, possible certification of the department with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies and the establishment of a pursuit review board.
The department may consider the board’s recommendations but is not bound to implement them.
According to a response to the commission from Police Chief Scott Wahl, the department is unlikely to implement the commission’s most sweeping changes to the pursuit justifications.
In a response to the commission dated Jan. 17, Wahl said that the department “believes imposing these restrictions could negatively impact public safety.”
“These risks include increased reckless and dangerous driving being allowed without police intervention and fleeing from illegal acts that threaten public safety without fear of being identified and held accountable for criminal violations,” Wahl said in the memo.
Doug Case, acting chair of the police commission, maintained in a statement to the Union-Tribune that pursuit justifications should be limited.
Case cited the current policies which state “officers involved in a pursuit have the responsibility to terminate the pursuit when the benefits of immediate apprehension are outweighed by the hazards of continuing the pursuit.”
“We believe that the very same standard should apply to initiating a pursuit,” Case said, “and that pursuits should therefore be avoided for infractions and minor traffic violations.”
The department’s current policies state that officers “should take into account the need to protect the public, and balance the known or suspected offense…against the risks to peace officers, innocent motorists and others.”
Case declined to comment further citing a need for the commission to confer over its response to Wahl’s memo.
The recommendations came after a 2023 incident in which a vehicle being pursued slammed into another car killing Mason Orozco, 4, and brother Malikai, 8, and severely injuring their mother and another woman. The pursuit began following an attempted traffic stop regarding a non-working headlight.
The mother is suing the city on claims of negligence due to officers’ actions during the chase.
In 2024, as the commission was finalizing its recommendations, Officer Austin Machitar was killed when his police cruiser was struck by a vehicle that was also involved in a pursuit.
Between 2018 and 2021, around 60% of the department’s pursuits arose out of suspected infractions, according to a Union-Tribune analysis of pursuit data collected by the state. During the same span, around 9% of all San Diego police pursuits ended in crashes resulting in injuries to 100 people, 26 of whom were bystanders.
In his response, Wahl said that the link between increased crime rates and similar, tighter pursuit policies have “already been observed in cities and states that have embraced this type of recommendation.”
Wahl cited issues the city of Oakland faced after implementing strict pursuit policies that drew the attention of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Newsom said that Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao should “reconsider whether OPD should be permitted to pursue suspects in more circumstances to improve public safety in your city.”
“If we implement more restrictive pursuit policies, I believe it will have an increase in crime,” Wahl said in an interview with the Union-Tribune Friday.
“If we have no pursuits, it’s hard to say that we’re going to save lives on the other end,” he said. “You can’t necessarily equate no pursuits with nobody’s ever going to get hurt or injured.”
Tasha Williamson, a police accountability activist, decried the department’s response to recommendations.
“We lost two children, 8 and 4 years old, Malikai and Mason … you lost a police officer, and you’re telling me you don’t think that you need to make changes to your police pursuits,” Williamson said outside of police headquarters Friday.
Elsewhere in the response, Wahl said he was amenable to some language modifications in the policies, such as adding the prioritization of public safety to the beginning of pursuit procedures, adopting the same pursuit definition as the California Highway Patrol and exploring the possibility of establishing a vehicle pursuit review board.
But Wahl indicated that a recommendation for the department to obtain CALEA certification “is not feasible given the forecasted budget deficit and the urgent need to address other priorities within SDPD.”
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