Unnecessary Tragedy

Opinion Article

January 2, 2012

by Candy Priano, Executive Director, PursuitSAFETY
PursuitSAFETY's board chairman, Jonathan Farris, also contributed to this article.

A horrible year-end vehicular crash involving 10-year veteran Georgia State Trooper Donald Crozier killed Kathy Porter and injured her husband Jeff, son David and David’s friend Courtney Ann Williams. Officer Crozier was transferred to a local hospital with injuries as a result of the crash.

The reason I am writing to you is no accident and neither are the violent crashes which too often kill and injure innocent bystanders and police officers. In 2007, I founded Voices Insisting on PursuitSAFETY, a national nonprofit organization that reaches out to the families of innocent victims impacted by vehicular police response calls and vehicular pursuits.

PursuitSAFETY’s board and members express our deepest condolences to the Porter family for Kathy Porter’s death. We also wish Kathy’s family and friends the strength they need to deal with this unimaginable emotional pain.

In 2010 USA Today reported on voluntary data collected by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This data revealed a frightening statistic: one person is killed every day as a result of drivers fleeing from police and/or police response calls. Of those killed, at least one-third are innocent bystanders. Also, approximately every six weeks these pursuit or response call crashes kill a police officer.

The severity of this most recent incident warrants a comprehensive review of the Georgia State Patrol pursuit policies, including the necessity of an officer trying to catch up with an already-active pursuit. We obviously do not have all of the information surrounding this tragedy, but it appears to have been a preventable death of another innocent victim.

Too often response calls and vehicular pursuits begun in the name of making our roads safer risk doing exactly the opposite--hastening rather than preventing tragedy. Vehicular pursuit and response policies must be reassessed and rewritten to ensure that public safety is paramount.

PursuitSAFETY’s website includes photographs and stories about our support for families like the Porters, tragically impacted by police pursuits gone awry. Pursuitsafety.org continues to increase awareness about this public safety issue so people realize it is a preventable, national problem.

About Voices Insisting on PursuitSAFETY
PursuitSAFETY is the sole national nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives of innocent bystanders and police officers as a result of police pursuit and response call crashes. Learn more at www.pursuitsafety.org.

Contacts for your story:
Candy Priano, founder and executive director of PursuitSAFETY, continues to work for a safer way so others will not have to endure the pain that she and thousands of others have suffered. A 2002 police chase through a residential neighborhood ended when a fleeing teenager, who officers knew had taken her mother's car without permission, slammed into Priano’s minivan right where her daughter Kristie, wearing her seatbelt, was sitting. It took seven days for Kristie to die, but only a few hours for the police to send the teen home with her mother. She was not even arrested. Later she would serve one year in juvenile hall. Kristie died from a massive closed-brain injury, a crushed brain stem, and extensive swelling that caused her brain to rupture. (530) 343-9754 (W) (530) 519-9754 (C) candy.priano@pursuitsafety.org

Jonathan Farris, board chairman for PursuitSAFETY, lost his son Paul in 2007. Paul, an innocent victim, died as a result of an unnecessary police chase in the Boston area. Jon is an advocate for changing police pursuit laws across the United States. (612) 804-5868 (C) jon@paulfarris.org