of a vehicle that is careening down the highway at high rates of speed. This scenario isgraphically portrayed in the old 1972 Joseph Wambaugh based movie
The New Centurions.
Inthat movie, Stacey Keach’s character/Officer attempts to take the keys out of the ignition of asuspect’s car, whereupon the female suspect throws the car into Drive and Ofc. Keach findshimself hanging on for dear life while the suspect drives through busy Los Angeles traffic.During this sojourn, she attempts to scrape the Officer off the car by sideswiping vehicles,buildings, and finally a white picket fence. As an extra added attraction, after Keach falls fromthe side of the car, the female suspect attempts to run him over with the car. This is not good. Ishow this movie clip at many of the seminars that I teach at as a good opening point from whichto discuss
Reaching Into Cars
. It always evokes stimulating conversation.The problem is that this does not only happen in the movies. Recently, I did a presentation aspart of a civil liability seminar in southwest Florida. During that presentation, I showed
The
NewCenturions’
film clip and then I got into a discussion about
Reaching into Cars
and discussedthis very problem. Ironically,
within one week
, approximately 25 miles south of where theseminar was held, in Ft. Myers, Florida an off-duty Sheriff’s Deputy walked up to a driver whowas slumped over the steering wheel of a pick-up truck, smelled alcohol, and reached into thesuspect’s truck to take the keys, and as he did the suspected DUI driver drove off with theDeputy hanging onto the side of the suspect’s vehicle. This event ended with the Deputy pullingout his firearm and shooting the suspect driver in the head and killing him! Fortunately thisDeputy Sheriff did not panic, and instead acted quickly and decisively and survived relativelyunscathed, physically, but the incident graphically underlines both the immediacy and theseriousness of this tactic. Unfortunately, many Officers are not as lucky, intuitive, or responsive.In an incident in Austin, Texas in 2006, a female Officer was dragged by the suspect vehiclewith her arm caught in the driver’s window of the suspect vehicle, but was not as lucky as StacyKeach’s character in
, when the suspect vehicle did run over her after shebroke loose from the vehicle.
In the KXAN TV story, reportedly Mike Sheffield of the AustinPolice Association sums up the problem
“you’re leaning into a car, getting a driver’s license,and then, all of a sudden, the driver starts to move. You don’t think about it. You grab on….”
That is exactly the problem; we do these kinds of things without thinking about it!Ft. Myers, Florida, was by no means an isolated incident. In Covington, LA in 2004 following atraffic stop, and subsequent search for drugs, one state trooper was thrown from the side of thesuspect’s vehicle as the suspect attempted to flee the scene and he was eventually shot in thehead byanother state trooper who was trapped in the suspect’s vehicle during his attempts toescape.
Once again, the Officer who fell from the vehicle was not seriously injured and hispartner acted quickly and ended a potentially deadly situation. This is just another case of dealing with the unexpected response of a suspect.These
Reaching Into Cars
incidents can create fatal consequences for Officers. In Tampa,Florida a reserved Deputy / security guard was killedwhen the suspect vehicle that he washanging onto flung him into a tree at a high speed.
This tragedy started with a
simple
shoplifting at a department store in Tampa at 5:30 PM, where a reserve Deputy John Tauer (aformer Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Deputy) / security guard chased a suspect on foot out thefront door to a waiting escape vehicle. Somehow, Deputy Tauer ended up hanging onto the door
1
See
Police Officer Dragged by Stolen Car
, KXAN.com, March 7, 2006.
2
See Associated Press article:
Deputy Dragged by Pickup Kills Driver
, November 21, 2006.
3
See
Deputy killed pursuing suspects
,
The St. Petersburg Times,
by Tamara Lush, September 19, 2003.2
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