Foot chases have long been a routine and accepted part of what police officers do: When someone runs from an officer, the officer takes off after them.
These chases can end catastrophically, with confrontations in which suspects are more likely than police officers to be injured or killed, research finds. In Memphis last month, police officers chased Tyre Nichols on foot following a traffic stop, then beat him to death when they caught him. Five officers were charged with second-degree murder.
Yet the Memphis Police Department does not have a policy specifying how officers should handle foot chases, and neither do most American law enforcement agencies.
But that’s begun to change, after a string of high-profile police killings that followed foot chases in other cities — including Chicago; Sacramento, California; Baltimore; and Las Vegas — fed an expanding effort to limit such pursuits. Footage from officers’ body cameras has given the public a firsthand look at how chases can turn deadly. Studies in different parts of the country have found that a significant proportion — ranging from 12% to 48% — of police shootings followed foot pursuits.
“Everyone knows this is a problem,” said Chris Burbank, the former police chief in Salt Lake City, and now a vice president at the Center for Policing Equity, which helps police departments find ways to reduce the use of force.
More than a decade ago, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department became one of the first in the country to create a policy on foot chases after coming under heavy criticism for a high number of deadly shootings. Hoping to avoid a federal investigation, the agency sought help from police reform experts at the Center for Policing Equity and the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The experts found that a disproportionate number of use-of-force incidents occurred following foot pursuits, Burbank said.
The department’s new foot chase policy required…
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