Sometimes it’s pretty obvious police officers need a little bit more training, if not a lot more. There are a lot of technical aspects to the job, so it’s not that we think your average citizen could do any better – they’d honestly do worse. But we do think anyone wearing the badge should have certain competencies, like using a spike strip to stop a fleeing suspect.
Suspect shoots a trooper’s radiator in the middle of a PIT.
Instead, a North Little Rock officer missed the suspect in a nice bright red Chevy Silverado, instead spiking his colleague who was the lead pursuit vehicle in the chase. It was a really good stick, too, deflating all four tires on the patrol car.
The chase, as you can see in the included dashcam footage, starts with an officer making a traffic stop. Our suspect waits until the cop gets up to his window and then bolts. But it’s not some crazy high-speed chase.
The worst it gets is the suspect swerving into the oncoming lanes of traffic, not getting near oncoming cars, and running a few red lights.
Still, stopping the pursuit is a priority. North Little Rock Police aren’t going to pull some dramatic PIT maneuver, they call Arkansas State Police in for that, but they will spike tires to slow down a suspect.
One would think if that’s your big move you’d have it down pretty well by now.
To be fair, the suspect did flip a sudden U-turn and so one of the officers probably decided to pull over and try spiking the truck’s tires. He didn’t have time to set up and so you can see he just threw the spikes at the suspect’s vehicle.
We’ve seen cops do this before in panic situations and it usually doesn’t result in a good stick. Since the lead officer wasn’t warned spikes were going to be thrown, he was following close behind and hit them, saying some choice words after. We kinda don’t blame him.
Image via Arkansas Police Activity/YouTube
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