High-speed police chases are killing too many people in SC | Opinion

Tyler Bailey and John Crangle challenged for an at-large Columbia City Council seat in 2021 and fell short. Bailey was elected to the council last year at the age of 34. Crangle was executive director of Common Cause South Carolina for nearly that long – 31 of his 83 years. Now, a new challenge unites them: putting an end to fatal police pursuits.

That goal should unite all of us.

Bailey and Crangle both want to keep innocent people alive and police officers safe during pursuits that too often turn deadly. Since 2015, police pursuits have led to the deaths of at least 12 people in Richland and Lexington counties and dozens more statewide. Local casualties include a police officer, three teenagers in a stolen car and, just last month, a woman and her 6-month-old unborn child.

Such deadly pursuits aren’t unique to South Carolina, of course, but the problem is worse here than almost anywhere else.

Crangle recalls being at the 2015 memorial service for Columbia police officer Stacy Case after she was killed when another officer struck her vehicle as they were both responding to a call. Crangle taught Case in three classes at Limestone College. Now he teaches others about all the times when people have died during police pursuits.

A San Francisco Chronicle investigation published in February revealed that only four states have had more per capita deaths in police pursuits than South Carolina had from 2017 to 2021. One death in a pursuit is too many, something the state seemed to realize in 2022 when it passed a law called the Vehicle Pursuit and Emergency Vehicle Operation Act 218. That law updated and mandated a set of minimum chase standards that all law enforcement agencies in South Carolina had to adopt and implement by 2023.

Yet people are still dying. People like Ashley Brown, who died April 9 after a Columbia police officer responding to a police chase drove his vehicle into hers in broad daylight. It was a day before what would have been her 35th birthday, five days before a planned baby shower.

Now, Bailey is exploring technologies that might stop something like Brown’s death from happening by reducing the need for high-speed pursuits that can veer out of control quickly, whether or not anyone might try to justify them after a terrible crime. Bailey has asked the council’s Public Safety Committee to study technological alternatives.

One technology is called Starchase, which can shoot GPS-enabled darts some 20 feet from the grills of police vehicles onto fleeing vehicles, allowing law enforcement to track them without racing after them. It’s not cheap, which may be why it’s not more widely used nationwide. Buying one device and installing it on one vehicle costs nearly $7,000, and there is a one-time training charge and an annual subscription fee. That could mean $2 million for a police department with 274 marked patrol cars.

But the Columbia Police Department’s annual budget is $47 million, and just two months ago the City Council approved spending $1.4 million on equipment such as body and dash cameras and Tasers, so there is a precedent for equipment being funded at that level.

It will be up to the City Council and the citizens of Columbia to say whether the price is worth it. But perhaps the cost is cheap when you consider that lives are at stake, that Stacy Case and Ashley Brown and her baby should all still be among us, and that the liability costs of loved ones who might sue over future fatal crashes could be huge.

Bailey said he’ll respect the council committee’s work and get feedback from the public before any final decision. Crangle already envisions the Columbia Police Department being a model for other law enforcement agencies in South Carolina, and he said if new technology works here, he’ll lobby for it to be used in Charleston next.

A pilot program would be smart. Approaching this problem slowly has already been a tragedy.

An earlier version of this column contained incorrect information about Starchase’s cost.

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