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Curoius ? Are police allowed to stop a motorcycle by hitting them ?


arlis77

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The question was this - " Are police allowed to stop a motorcycle by hitting them ?" Nothing about why they were being chased in the question.

If you run from the cops, you escalate any situation no matter how minor it may have been in the beginning.

Mary

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there is such a thing as felony evading depending on speed. Once you hit the felony part, they will pretty much do whatever they want to stop you.

Yes there are police that probably take it further than they should but the key thing to remember is DONT BE AN IDIOT WHILE RIDDING!!

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well they were chasing stolen property. not just someone going over the speed limit. i the question is, eh, fuck it.

They still have to weigh up the risk. Felony theft is a property crime and not worth seriously injuring someone over.

Having said that, it's all situational... Knocking a fully geared-up dirt rider into grass at jogging pace is a different league than taking down and un-geared rider on the street at road speed. There's also questions about how the contact was made - did the cruiser try to block the bike in and the bike crashed trying to escape? Or did the cruiser come flying up behind and drive right over him with no warning? Was is a impact, or a brush? Head-on, t-bone or PIT? Using a football analogy, did the push him out of bounds, or sack him like a quarterback?

TBH, I give the police a LOT of leeway when stopping a fleeing felon. More than a court would in some cases. You can't send the message out that fleeing on a bike is a get-out-of-jail card. The officer has to be careful, though - "Officer fatally runs over child for riding a stolen bike" is an ugly headline to read in the paper.

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What's the desired outcome? Is it to end the chase' date=' to catch the speeder? If it's the former, then ending pursuit is the quickest and safest way to end the chase. What's the point in endangering the lives of other drivers to catch some punk on a bike? With cameras and helicopters available, it's kind of silly to thrust a 4000lb cruiser down the road at 100mph for a moving violation, turned felony. Not even a major felony, at that.[/quote']

yeah but they keep chasing anyway b/c they want to be roscoe from dukes of hazzard...

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A car ramming a bike at road speeds is deadly force. If the cop can justify shooting you, he can justify ramming you.

That seems like a pretty reasonable interpretation.

Regardless of justification, dead is dead. This why I won't run.

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Which is why when one says hi to me and I smile back and say hi to him, inside I'm really saying I fucking hate you. Oops, did I just post that? That's it, I'm going to hell. Yes, I have a clean record, never been in trouble with law either. I just don't care for them; my right of my opinion.:cheers:

Then why don't you grow a sack and when a cop says "hi" to you, tell them what you really think.

Takes a special kind of pussy to bitch up like you.

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Simple. If you don't want your ass run over...don't run.

Many of the vids I have seen, look like the motorcycle slowed to turn faster than the car behind them could slow and the bike was hit. But I have also seed some, like the one above where they were hit on purpose. I any case, right or wrong, listen to Chris Rock. :)

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Looks like the cop was trying to knock them off the bike. At that speed the motorbike was going being knocked off should have been relatively harmless - but at the speed the cruiser was going the risk of them going under the wheels was extremely high.

I would argue the officer needed something more than riding without plates (or running because they were riding without plates) to justify that collision if it was intentional. I don't know what information the officer had so I can't comment on that.

It's difficult to say if the collision was accidental or intentional - it could go either way. We would expect the officer to approach quickly and get close, and the bike had slowed down just seconds before - but the cruiser was going at a speed and on a trajectory that would have allowed him to easily brake or steer right to avoid the collision at the last second. My guess is that the officer was hoping to knock them off the bike and misjudged it. Don't think that it rises to a criminal level, but I'd be taking a close look at if he should remain a police officer.

And let's not forget that the cops don't chase innocent people like that - we give cops a badge, a gun and a cruiser, demand they make split-second decisions in life and death situations, then site back for weeks and research & debate every single individual action. I give cops a lot of leeway in these situations, recognizing the dynamic nature of the circumstances, adrenaline, fear, responsibility and the fact it's happening in real time for them - I am quick to forgive honest mistakes. What I don't think we should tolerate is behavior that is in bad faith, before or after the event. If we believe the cop was only trying to end the pursuit and not trying to kill the guy then he should be forgiven for the bad judgement call under condition that the department all learn form that and adapt their policies to be better suited to the needs of that individual pursuits in the future.

People make mistakes at work - it happens, always will. We all expect to be forgiven our mistakes at work while scream out for the cop to be fired when they make a mistake. If we fired every cop who made a mistake we'd have no cops left.

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And let's not forget that the cops don't chase innocent people like that - we give cops a badge, a gun and a cruiser, demand they make split-second decisions in life and death situations, then site back for weeks and research & debate every single individual action. I give cops a lot of leeway in these situations, recognizing the dynamic nature of the circumstances, adrenaline, fear, responsibility and the fact it's happening in real time for them - I am quick to forgive honest mistakes. What I don't think we should tolerate is behavior that is in bad faith, before or after the event. If we believe the cop was only trying to end the pursuit and not trying to kill the guy then he should be forgiven for the bad judgement call under condition that the department all learn form that and adapt their policies to be better suited to the needs of that individual pursuits in the future.

People make mistakes at work - it happens, always will. We all expect to be forgiven our mistakes at work while scream out for the cop to be fired when they make a mistake. If we fired every cop who made a mistake we'd have no cops left.

Holy shit, an insightful response.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Totality of the circumstances and the ability to make split second decisions based on facts that were present to the officer at the time. Yeah some cops make bad choices. But just like not all sport bike riders are dangerous hooligans, not all cops are power hungry monsters with a gun.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The short answer to the original question posed is always going to be "it depends."

Departments set their own pursuit policies. If the circumstances justify wrecking the fleeing vehicle, and doing so is within the department's policy guidelines, then yes, they can absolutely hit a rider to stop him from fleeing.

But there is going to be a rebuttal argument like Scruit(?) or someone else pointed out. Wrecking a rider may very well be considered deadly force. That all depends on the speed, road conditions, what gear the rider is or isn't wearing (like a helmet), how they stop the rider (struck with a car? Struck with another motorcycle? Spike-strips? movie-style clothes-line device?) etc.

There are rarely "bright line" rules on these sort of things, because it's very rare that any two scenarios are truly identical. Even when the chase itself is identical, the situation that gave rise to the chase probably isn't.

The variables are what keep attorneys in business. The variables are also why we have trials. The things that fall pretty clearly on one side of the law or the other are settled prior to trial.

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