Daily Herald opinion: Technology at last that police can use rather than start high-speed chases

This editorial is a consensus opinion of the Daily Herald Editorial Board.

As critics of police, public agencies, criminologists and police themselves have studied the dangers of high-speed chases initiated by police over the last couple of decades, one lament has been the wait for new technology that could give police a better way to handle fleeing suspects. Now the technology is starting to come through, and Oak Brook police have their hands on it.

Our Cops & Crime columnists, Charles Keeshan and Susan Sarkauskas, reported last week on new devices called GPS darts. As they wrote, the projectiles with a GPS tracker and a transmitter can be fired at a fleeing vehicle from either a launcher on the police vehicle or a handheld launcher. Then the police watch where the suspect drives. The goal is to refrain from a chase that could endanger officers, suspects and innocent bystanders - and still apprehend criminals.

"Our goal is to avoid pursuits whenever possible, but we're also not going to allow people to flee from police without any consequences," Chief Brian Strockis said.

The risk of police pursuits is real. At least 11,506 people were killed nationally in police chases from 1979 through 2013, USA Today reported in 2015, based on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That was an average of 323 people per year. About 6,300 were the fleeing suspects, while more than 5,000 were bystanders and passengers, and 139 were police. Thousands and thousands more were hurt. Then in 2020 alone, 532 people were killed in police pursuits, CNN reported, again citing NHTSA data.

Here in the suburbs, the increasing number of fleeing suspects in the last couple of years has been called an "epidemic" by the likes of DuPage County State's Attorney Robert Berlin. In DuPage, home of Oak Brook, the number of aggravated fleeing and eluding prosecutions has risen from 51 in 2020 to 82 in 2022. There were with 14 last month alone. The numbers rose in other counties, too.

A couple of recent consequences: Shoplifting suspects in Oak Brook zipped past York High School in April, sideswiped a school bus and crashed into another vehicle. Also last month, a chase that began in Warrenville ended with an SUV crashing in an Aurora neighborhood.

Berlin often places blame on the fleeing suspects for creating danger. There's something to that, to be sure. But the question of whether police also create the problems by starting pursuits has long been raised. Danger to the public from a violent criminal could be a good reason for them. But is catching a car thief? A shoplifter? What's worth the risk?

With Oak Brook being the home of the Oakbrook Center mall, a frequent target of store thieves who can quickly flee onto adjacent highways, village police have reason to ask that question and pursue alternatives - and they have. It's good to see technological options like the GPS darts, and we hope to see more police exploring these options over dangerous chases.