Rantz: Seattle cop reprimanded for pursuing violent suspect who rammed stolen car into cruiser

A Seattle police officer was officially reprimanded for a brief pursuit of a suspect in a stolen car who committed an assault. Officers said this is yet another example explaining why police are so frustrated in Seattle.

Officers were responding to a call from the car owner saying his vehicle was stolen from in front of his house. The police tracked the stolen vehicle to a nearby Jack in the Box after the victim provided officers with access to the car’s GPS tracking system. They coordinated a containment plan to make an arrest of the occupants in the stolen vehicle, but the driver intentionally and continually rammed the vehicle into the officer’s patrol cruiser.

“After ramming my vehicle, he then drove away at a high rate of speed,” the officer wrote in the incident report.

The officer briefly pursued the stolen vehicle as it fled because he thought he’d be granted permission to pursue due to the nature of the incident — an assault 3. During the brief pursuit, the officer drove through a red light because traffic was clear. While in pursuit, the officer’s supervisor said he could not pursue and the officer complied.

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Why was a Seattle police officer reprimanded over the pursuit policy?

Though the pursuit was brief and without incident, the Office of Police Accountability (OPA) sustained a complaint by the officer’s supervisor for violating the department’s pursuit policy because the pursuit began without authorization.

Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) president Officer Mike Solan criticized the decision on “The Jason Rantz Show” on KTTH.

“I think it’s emblematic of, quite literally, the policies that have handcuffed our ability to effectively do our jobs,” Solan explained. “And you become a police officer to want to catch bad people doing bad things, to protect the public. But when we’re administratively handcuffed to prohibit us from doing so, then ultimately, at the end of the day, the public is the victim in a larger sense. And the administrative process, the hurdles police officers now have to go through in terms of discipline are extreme.”

The Seattle Police Department has seen a mass exodus of officers since 2018. The crisis accelerated in 2020 with nearly 700 officers leaving the department since the Seattle City Council embraced the defund movement. This year, there have been 61 officers separated from the department through July, including 11 student recruits.

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Bad policies lead to lawlessness

The Seattle Police Department’s pursuit policy is more restrictive than what is allowed under the law. Officers must get authorization to pursue and the suspect, generally, must be violent. But the policy ensures that police would not be able to easily catch up to a fleeing suspect if they’re given authorization to pursue. Had the officer waited for authorization, the suspect would have been too far gone for the officer to effectively and safely catch up.

The OPA investigative process into the complaint is as problematic. This incident occurred on November 13, 2023. The officer wasn’t even interviewed until March 29, 2024. The sustained findings against the officer weren’t posted until June 26, 2024.

“When you create this environment where officers are off the street for hours on end doing paperwork, this is intentional. And when you really review the policies that are consistently being overhauled (and) reformed, it leads to this lawlessness,” Solan said, a reference to the rise in crime since Black Lives Matter-inspired policies were implemented in Seattle and statewide. “We’re seeing it play out where … in this case, you can have a suspect ram a police officer and basically a police officer not being able to take that person into custody, or at least pursue them, to hold them accountable, at least put them in handcuffs for maybe perhaps a few hours in jail. And this is what we’re dealing with.”

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