MORE TOP STORIES IN TODAY'S DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
After a vehicle fleeing from Little Rock police crashed and struck two pedestrians last month, Chief Kenton Buckner, speaking to reporters, said it may have been 27 years since his department handled such a case.
Trendia Horton, 39, was jogging with her 18-year-old daughter, Nahtali, the afternoon of Sept. 15 when a man suspected of car theft driving a Nissan Maxima careened onto the sidewalk with an officer in pursuit. The Maxima struck the women, leaving Trendia Horton dead and Nahtali Horton in a coma.
A Roland man with felony theft convictions, Jordan Vandenberghe, 24, was charged with first-degree murder in the crash.
The human toll of the chase was out of the ordinary for the Police Department, Buckner said.
But the crash, according to police data, was not.
Department records show more than one in four police chases between 2009 and 2014 involved a crash. Fleeing suspects crashed in 26.3 percent of the 452 chases recorded in that time. Officers crashed in 5.7 percent of those chases.
The data, released to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette under the state's Freedom of Information Act, also show the number of chases has increased in recent years.
Police logged 112 chases in 2014, higher than any of the previous five years and more than the number of chases in 2010 and 2011 combined.
The state's largest police department was on pace to record even more chases this year. Through June 30, the last date such data were available, officers had pursued suspects in vehicles on 59 occasions. The number of suspect crashes recorded halfway through the year, 18, is equal to the number of suspect crashes recorded in all of 2014.
Capt. Heath Helton, who analyzes pursuit statistics as commander of the Police Department's training division, had no explanation for the increase in chases.
"It's hard to say what the reasons might be for people to decide not to stop," he said. "The majority of the time, the majority are individuals who might have a traffic warrant or do not have a driver's license. Usually it's minor, misdemeanor stuff. And occasionally you have the aggravated robbery suspect or narcotics people throwing dope out of the window as they're going down the road. Pursuits are really interesting because it's hard to judge how they shift the way they do."
While the numbers have shifted in recent years, the department's policy governing chases has not.
Officers must activate their emergency signals and be in a marked police vehicle. They are prohibited from ramming vehicles, using police cars to block road and forcing suspects off the road. Additionally, they are restricted from chasing a suspect whose identity is known and is wanted only for a traffic violation, misdemeanor or nonviolent felony.
Otherwise, a chase largely depends on the discretion of an officer and supervisor. The nine-page policy instructs them to consider traffic conditions, weather, surroundings and various other situational and environmental factors in determining whether "the necessity of apprehension is outweighed by the level of danger."
"One thing we always stress," Helton said, "especially when you talk about pursuits, we tell the officers to keep in your mind that you have no ability to dictate the outcome of that pursuit or the type of injury that occurs. That's the one thing. We try to minimize it the best we can, and we try to hone in on training that if it gets to a point that's too dangerous, it's not worth it."
Police recruits spend about 80 hours training behind the wheel. About 24 of those hours focus on a "full range" of exercises -- driving through obstacle courses, emergency stopping and simulated chases.
By comparison, recruits receive more than 100 hours of firearms training; 80 hours of scenario-based training, such as responding to incidents of domestic violence; 40 hours of active shooter training and 20 hours of training in field sobriety tests.
Helton said pursuit training is unique in many ways.
"Police pursuits are probably one of the more challenging and dangerous aspects of the job, reason being that I can know my capabilities in a vehicle but I really don't know the abilities of the individual being pursued. And you worry about other people and civilians, and people who aren't paying attention ... You're constantly having to move your eyes and keep track of what's going, monitoring your traffic, monitoring your speed, and really determining what is the risk versus what is the benefit for me to continue with this pursuit," he said.
More often than not, at least during a two-year period analyzed by the Democrat-Gazette, officers have chosen to chase people suspected of minor offenses.
Pursuit reports from 2010 and 2011 show traffic stops, misdemeanors or "suspicious activity" listed as the "initial violation" in 62 percent of the 105 total chases in those years.
Nonviolent felonies were listed as the initial violation in 21 percent of the chases.
Violent felonies accounted for 13 percent.
Similar data for other years wasn't available, as the department stopped tracking initial violations, and numerous other chase details, in 2012. Pursuit data prior to the period analyzed by the Democrat-Gazette were archived and not immediately available, according to Sgt. Cassandra Davis, who handles public records requests for the department.
Police incident reports obtained by the Democrat-Gazette this year show officers continue to chase those suspected of minor offenses.
On Sept. 27, according to one report, an officer began a pursuit on Chicot Road at Fairfield Drive -- just north of where Trendia Horton was killed -- after a man not wearing a seat belt refused to pull over.
The officer, Dalton Schisler, chased the suspect, later identified by police as Jimmon Hollins, 19, east through a residential area in which "pedestrians in the roadway had to run into the yards to avoid being hit," the report states.
Police said it appeared Hollins, who had prior drug convictions, threw marijuana from his window during the chase. He purportedly zig-zagged through the neighborhood, with Schisler in pursuit, to an apartment complex. That's where, again, "pedestrians had to run out of the way to avoid from being struck," according to the report.
Hollins doubled back and weaved through the same residential streets before fleeing on foot and being apprehended, according to police. He was charged with felony fleeing and felony possession of drug paraphernalia.
Hollins was additionally cited for the violation that began the pursuit and sent pedestrians running-- driving without a seat belt.
Like Hollins, Vandenberghe was a suspect in a non-violent crime when officer Zachary Hardman chased him Sept. 15 on Chicot Road. Police said that chase spanned less than a mile before Vandenberghe struck another vehicle, lost control and crashed into Trendia and Nahtali Horton.
Residents and members of the Horton family expressed anger at Vandenberghe, but they were also critical of the police decision to chase a man suspected only of theft. Additionally, witnesses of the crash accused Hardman of not activating his emergency lights.
Buckner said that information, as well as dashboard camera footage of the chase, will be eventually be released.
Police spokesman Lt. Steve McClanahan said the 28-second video is in the hands of prosecutors and Hardman has since returned to duty. No charges had been filed.
The International Association of Police Chiefs released a study in 2008 that showed more than 91 percent of police chases involved suspects in non-violent crimes. The data came from 7,737 chases at 56 police departments.
Reports from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over the past decade show one-third of those killed in police chases were bystanders, although the FBI has stated a lack of mandatory reporting by law enforcement agencies has affected the accuracy of that figure.
Metro on 10/12/2015