This doesn’t make Seattle police look good.
As we’ve covered before, car theft is out of control in Seattle. While city leaders have tried to portray the problem conveniently has not that big of a deal, we know car theft often is symptomatic of and conducive to other crime, including violent offenses. Also, in incidents like this one where multiple Seattle Police units try containing a suspect in a stolen Dodge Challenger, these criminals pose a general risk to the public.
Watch a Dodge Challenger driver teach an Arkansas State Police trooper a lesson.
The footage of this incident looks to be captured from a traffic camera or something similar, giving us a view from well above street level as the incident unfolds. We see police arrive on street with construction, what KOMO News reports is the Spire Park neighborhood.
Those police and other units descended on the area after a residential burglary turned into a pursuit with the suspects in the stolen Mopar on the afternoon of July 14. In fact, that car was at the residence, which was reportedly an Airbnb, where three out-of-town women who were attending a dance competition had been staying.
Thankfully, the owner of the Dodge muscle car had a GPS tracker in it, which she activated while contacting police. That allowed officers to try trapping it in the alleyway in the video. What we don’t understand is why officers didn’t park their Explorer so it blocked the alley completely, because that allowed the suspect to drive out and onto the street.
It was a chaotic scene at that point, with the suspect driving into a dead-end, reversing, going through the construction, reversing down the street, and officers scrambling to follow. Our short analysis is Seattle PD needs better training.
The Dodge Challenger made it to the interstate and got off in the University District before hitting another car head-on and finally getting pinned front behind by police. You can see in a brief video posted to Twitter the Mopar looks pretty beat up, so the owner might not be too happy once the insurance company assesses the damage.
Keystone cops movie, 90 years later…