Dear Editor,
The reported car chase last Friday evening in south Georgetown by the Joint Special Operations Group (JSOG) of three fleeing armed suspects deserves some comment. First, the eventual capture of the suspects, who were reportedly on their way to commit a murder, should be praised as good protective police work. Secondly, if the car chase resembled those popularized in Hollywood movies, then the fact that the police did not shoot any of the suspects at the moment of capture is a demonstration of commendable police restraint. Police, it is well documented, are sometimes prone to use unwarranted or deadly force after hot pursuits, as they fall prey to high adrenaline flows and wild retributive impulses. The restraint therefore is even more remarkable as the police and the suspects exchanged gunfire during the chase, resulting in the injury of one policeman.
All well and good. My third comment, however, touches on a significant concern. What are the rules of engagement in our police force for pursuing escaping suspects, whether by vehicle or by foot, and for using firearms during such pursuits? When is a police vehicle chase in Guyana a reasonable course of action? And when is the discharge of a firearm by police accepted as a necessary and proportionate response in such a chase? The foremost concern here is that police chases could seriously injure or end the lives of bystanders.
As regards the rules for police pursuits, I would hope those of the Guyana Police Force mirror the position of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police in its 2007 submission to the US Supreme Court, that “when the immediate danger to the public created by the pursuit is greater than the immediate or potential danger to the public should the suspect remain at large, then the pursuit should be discontinued or terminated”. Furthermore, the submission advised that pursuits “should usually be discontinued when the violator’s identity has been established to the point that later apprehension can be accomplished without danger to the public”. The policy on pursuits across several other states in the US, as far as I can determine, embraces this overarching position, emphasizing that the police must exercise due care for public safety and must consider in their decision to engage in or terminate a vehicular pursuit such factors as the volume of traffic, location of pursuit (urban or rural), weather conditions, road conditions, and alternate methods of apprehension. The nature of the underlying crime is also considered, with a list of “no chase” crimes predetermined. In all this, the understanding exists that the hands of the police must not be unnecessarily tied.
The sketchy details of the south Georgetown incident notwithstanding, were these standards to be applied in Guyana, the chase was likely unwarranted. The suspects were known to the police, as they were under surveillance weeks prior to the encounter. Later apprehension could have possibly been accomplished without danger to the public. The generality of this last assumption, I concede, should be tested against local police records and statistics.
With regard to the discharge of firearms by police in a car chase, the public is put at risk in two ways: through death or injury by wayward gunshots, or through death or injury should the escaping vehicle turn into an out-of-control missile should its driver be shot and killed by the police. The NYPD’s patrol guide seems a good standard for us to follow. It states that “police officers shall not discharge their firearms at or from a moving vehicle unless deadly physical force is being used against the police officer or another person present…” By this standard, our police in the south Georgetown incident can claim to be in their rights to return fire at the fleeing vehicle, as the suspects did open fire on them, injuring one of their members. But do we need to get to that point? And are our police trained to know when they could use firepower and when and how they could avoid it?
Can we in Guyana assume that any extended high-speed vehicular pursuit by the police through our streets, with their guns blazing, must mean that the police were convinced that should the targeted suspects escape, they would have posed immediate or potential danger to the public far greater than the chase itself and the gunfire?
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Lowe