Don’t believe the smears. A fact-based police pursuit law makes Washington safer | Opinion

We have a duty to put people over politics and make fact-based decisions.

In Federal Way in 2019, police chasing a “reckless driver” hit speeds over 70 miles per hour, resulting in the death of the driver and sending a 9-year-old passenger to the hospital. The same year in Seattle, a high-speed pursuit ended when the driver slammed into a parked garbage truck, killing the passenger instantly. In our home city of Tacoma in 2018, police initiated a pursuit to catch a speeding driver, chasing the car onto the Interstate 5 interchange where it collided with a truck, breaking the truck driver’s neck and causing “permanent and life-altering injuries.”

The fact is that high-speed chases are inherently dangerous to everyone involved, including police officers, suspects and passengers, but most importantly the public. This is why, in 2021, the Washington Legislature passed House Bill 1054, creating uniform standards for pursuits. It passed as part of a larger package that enshrined into law, for the first time, that it is the “fundamental duty of law enforcement to preserve and protect human life.”

This law created a statewide standard for pursuits based on best practices that centered public safety, especially for bystanders. The law change allows an officer to engage in high-speed chases when they have probable cause for violent or sex offenses, or to get an impaired driver off the road. It also asks responding officers to consider if the risk of a pursuit outweighs the risk of harm to the public and requires approval by an officer’s supervisor. Prior to the law passing, 12 jurisdictions across the state, including Tacoma, already restricted or prohibited pursuits to protect officers and the public.

The stories we share are not just anecdotes. A Pierce County audit on police pursuits highlights the continuing and significant concerns about the ways that police pursuits were carried out prior to changes in state law. In Lakewood, more pursuits resulted in crashes (38%) than in arrests (35%) and 9% resulted in injuries. Eleven percent of the 644 pursuits the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office took part in from 2017-2021 resulted in injuries. The most common charges that resulted from these pursuits were eluding (the actual pursuit itself) and driving with a suspended license. The audit states that “more restrictive policies, in particular result in fewer pursuits, as well as reducing accidents, injuries and deaths.”

We must be even more cautious when considering densely populated areas. Communities like South Tacoma and Parkland already lack adequate pedestrian infrastructure and bear a disproportionate risk of harm. The safety of every person, in every neighborhood, must be at the center of each decision.

However, we continue to hear a false narrative, meant to instill fear and provide a simple solution to a complex problem. Changes in Washington’s pursuit law are being blamed as solely responsible for the national spike in crime, auto theft, and the overall safety of our communities.

Here are the facts. Crime has spiked across the nation, even in places that did not change policies on high-speed chases. Motor vehicle theft has been increasing since 2020, a whole year before the reforms, and tracks the rising value of used auto prices. Car theft is up in every West Coast state, and Colorado saw the highest increase in auto thefts in the country.

To attribute these trends to the change of one policy prioritizes politics over hard-fought reforms that are proven to improve safety of innocent individuals and their property.

Liberal or conservative, we should prioritize people’s safety, make data-informed decisions and, when possible, offer safe alternatives. We must also remember why these policies were enacted in the first place. We entrust those who put on the uniform with great responsibilities. As policymakers, we must ensure those responsibilities are married to accountability. While neither of us served in the Legislature when the accountability package passed, we remember its significance.

In the summer of 2020, we marched alongside tens of thousands of Washingtonians, and many of our neighbors and friends here in Tacoma and across Pierce County, to protest police violence and deadly use of force. We mourned the loss of Manny Ellis alongside his family on 96th Street S and Ainsworth Ave S. We cried out for justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many others. Now we do the same for Tyre Nichols, even as the political pressure to roll back hard-fought solutions without data, threatens to further divide us.

The Legislature has before it several bills regarding pursuits this year. We support legislation that follows national best practices and delegates a group of law enforcement officers, community representatives and academic experts to work together with the Criminal Justice Training Commission to create legislative recommendations for amending our current law. This proposal sets a table to consider and develop recommendations that are proven to be effective. It also provides grant funding to local governments to look at alternatives that are potentially much safer and more effective than high-speed chases.

A lot has been said about and attributed to this one policy, but the only thing we know for sure is that fatalities resulting from high-speed chases are down since its implementation.

We invite all our colleagues to work toward a policy rooted in facts that prioritizes bystanders, and to ultimately move forward together with sustainable and safe solutions that work for every person in every community.

Rep. Sharlett Mena, D-Tacoma, was elected to represent Washington’s 29th District in 2022.

Sen. Yasmin Trudeau, D-Tacoma, represents Washington’s 27th Legislative district.