Hollywood has left many people with the mistaken impression that shooting out a vehicle’s tires is an easy thing, barely an inconvenience, but this dashcam footage of an Arkansas trooper doing that to a stolen bus is a true rarity in the real world. We can only think of one other incident caught on camera in the recent past where a cop shot out tires to stop a fleeing suspect, versus hundreds, maybe even thousands of incidents where tires were spiked or a car was pitted out
Watch felony shoplifting suspects get pitted out while fleeing from police.
Obviously, using a PIT maneuver on a big motorcoach bus isn’t realistic, but we see a trooper try it out of desperation anyway. It works about as well you might expect, damaging the bumper cover on the larger vehicle and almost causing the trooper to wreck out.
In this case, the suspect swiped the bus from Little Rock at about 3 am and was discovered on US Highway 70 westbound almost five hours later.
Troopers swarm the bus in the dashcam footage of the chase. After the failed PIT attempt, you can see the suspect keeps trying to brake check the trooper following behind. It’s obvious the suspect wasn’t just trying to get away but had decided taking out some cops in the process was his ticket.
To be honest, other than being big and impossible to PIT out, a bus is a horrendous getaway car. After all, they’re slow, cumbersome, and they stick out like a sore thumb. But we don’t think anyone saw it being stopped by shooting out the tires.
Why police didn’t use spike strips isn’t clear, but we do know some suspects have tried swerving and hitting cops as they’re deploying them. Considering the size of the bus tires and the suspect’s willingness to put law enforcement at risk, that might not have even worked or been a good idea.
How the trooper does it is pretty amazing: he jumps out of his cruiser when the bus gets hung up on some railroad tracks, ear muffs on and carrying a shotgun, which he uses to destroy at least two tires. Troopers in their cruisers corral the bus back onto railroad tracks, bringing the chase to a close. It’s actually a pretty smart move to stop the large, heavy vehicle.
Image via Arkansas State Police/YouTube