Richmond Area localities opt to maintain police-pursuit policy

Regional law-enforcement agencies will continue to apply longstanding regional guidelines regarding police pursuits, even in high-density areas and when crossing into neighboring jurisdictions.

Seven weeks after he called for a review of regional pursuit policies after a fatal high-speed chase in the city's East End, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones said yesterday that area localities will not specifically bar pursuits in congested areas.

Jones said at a news conference that police officers are killed more often by use of their vehicles than by violence, and that pursuits "are one of the riskiest law-enforcement actions for officers."

But he said it would be improper to create any policy that in effect tells lawbreakers they will not be pursued.

"We can't lose sight of the fact that it is the person that flees that creates the problem of high-speed police pursuits," he said.

Rather, area law-enforcement agencies periodically will review existing policies, they'll enhance training, and they will require agencies to notify neighboring jurisdictions about checkpoints within 2 miles of the locality's border instead of 1 mile.

The decision emphasizing incident-to-incident police training for initiating pursuits followed a meeting yesterday of area police chiefs and administrators, including from the counties of Hanover, Henrico and Chesterfield, as well as Virginia Commonwealth University and Richmond. The meeting was not open to the public.

Jones' call for action March 31 followed a high-speed chase by Henrico police a week earlier into the city's East End; the mile-long pursuit ended when the pursued vehicle, which had sped through stop signs with extinguished headlights, slammed into a car driven by an East End minister and community activist, Apostle Anthony L. Taylor, killing him.

A Henrico man faces a murder charge as a result of Taylor's death, but specific details of actions by Henrico police and the pursued driver remain largely unknown.

According to Col. Henry W. Stanley Jr., Henrico's police chief, the actions by Henrico officers largely complied with the department's pursuit policies, as well as with a regional policy created in 2003. He acknowledged that Richmond was not notified that Henrico was setting up a checkpoint on the edge of the city limits, a violation of existing policy.
That 2003 policy will continue to form the bedrock of ongoing discussions and improvements, Jones said yesterday.
The mayor was praised by some city leaders and East End residents for taking the initiative to look into the regional system, but he also received sharp criticism from at least one top law-enforcement official, Col. V. Stuart Cook, the Hanover sheriff.

"We cannot allow the criminal element the freedom to make a mockery of our law-abiding society and have law enforcement stand by and do nothing," Cook wrote to Hanover residents last month.

Cook wrote that regional, uniform policies regarding pursuits have been in place since 2003, and he pointedly cited "the political rhetoric" that followed Taylor's death.

"I only wish that Mayor Jones and others had asked their respective chiefs of police what we had done before demanding something to be done," he wrote.

Jones said yesterday that stiffer penalties for those who flee police will be sought in the General Assembly, perhaps beyond license revocation. And he said Hanover authorities have agreed to create a database of regional pursuit incidents that will help the community and police better understand to what extent pursuits occur and why.

In the weeks after Taylor's death, attention turned from the action of Henrico police to those of Richmond officers. Richmond Police Chief Bryan T. Norwood yesterday declined to say whether Richmond officers were pursuing motorcyclist Thomas U. Johnson, 27, when he crashed and died early April 24 at North 25th and M streets.

Later that night, a Richmond police officer was struck when a Henrico woman allegedly fled a traffic stop on Interstate 195 and then was chased onto highly congested West Broad Street in Henrico about 3 miles away. She is accused of ramming her BMW into a Henrico police vehicle and running away on foot.

Richmond and Henrico police have not released details of a chase that led to the deaths of two robbery suspects on Charles City Road in Henrico in December, or of the high-speed pursuit by Richmond officers into Henrico on Nine Mile Road in October that resulted in multiple collisions.