By Jeff Mosier, The Dallas Morning News
The driver-side airbags were disabled in both River Oaks police vehicles involved in a crash about a month ago that killed one officer and injured another, city officials said.
However, the doctor who performed the autopsy on Officer Nathan Laurie said he doubts that an airbag would have saved him. Officer Jesse Rios struck Officer Laurie’s Jeep Cherokee on the passenger side while chasing a stolen pickup truck on July 29. Officer Rios was not seriously injured.
Police departments rarely disable the driver-side airbag, said the owner of the company that provided the switches to River Oaks.
Ramon Goheen, owner of AOI Electrical Inc. in Keller, the nation’s largest supplier of aftermarket airbag switches, said that his customer base includes more than 1,000 police agencies. River Oaks is the only one to request switches for the driver side, he said.
Police Chief Daniel Chisholm said there are valid reasons for allowing the airbags to be disabled, but he said the practice would be re-examined as he continues looking into the crash. The Sheriff’s Department is conducting the criminal investigation of the accident and has made an arrest.
“We’ll look at the report and what happened, and we’ll make any changes that we deem necessary,” Chief Chisholm said.
The River Oaks City Council approved installation of switches in all its police vehicles in 1999 to allow each officer to turn off the passenger- and driver-side airbags. There is no city policy or guidelines for when the airbags should be disabled so the decision is made entirely by the officers, Chief Chisholm said.
Passenger-side airbags are often disabled in police cars because deployment can damage equipment, such as shotgun racks and computer terminals, and send the gear hurtling toward the driver.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration sent a letter to police agencies nationwide in 2002 warning them about the dangers of passenger-side airbags.
Chief Chisholm, who was not police chief when the switches were installed, said there were concerns at the time that drivers would back into the Jeeps to disable them, a tactic that started among some criminals when airbags became standard equipment in the 1990s. The driver of the stolen pickup backed into Officer Laurie’s vehicle in an apparent attempt to disable it.
He said that department officials were also worried that if officers tried to push other vehicles with their Jeeps, the driver’s airbag would deploy.
Mayor Herman Earwood, who was unaware of the switches until after the accident, said he’s not second-guessing the Police Department on the use of airbag switches. He said that he would consider a change if the chief believes that is needed.
“I would not be comfortable telling an officer: ‘You need to do this’ or ‘You need to do that,’ ” Mr. Earwood said. “I haven’t had the extensive training they’ve had.”
The main factors that supported the council’s decision to install the switches was that the 2-square-mile city has no highway access and little need for officers to drive at high speeds. Most of the patrolling occurs in residential areas, and the police Jeeps rarely need to go faster than 40 mph.
“If I’m driving 30 or 40 mph, I don’t know if I would want that thing to go off in my face or not,” Mr. Earwood said.
Tom Gaylor, deputy executive director of the Texas Municipal Police Association, said the decision to turn off an airbag is a difficult one because there are dangers with either decision.
“You have to balance those safety issues,” he said.
The three largest area police departments, Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington, do not have these switches in most of their vehicles. Mr. Goheen said that some are installed in a small number of Dallas police pursuit cars.
But several Northeast Tarrant County departments have installed the passenger-side switches.
Lt. Tommy Williams, a Keller police spokesman, said there was never any serious discussion of installing driver-side switches. He said they spoke to other departments who reported pushing stalled cars with a police car would not set off the airbag.
There are some cases where another driver backed into a patrol car to disable them, but Lt. Williams said that’s a chance they’ll take.
“The safety factor probably overrides the concern that someone might back into an officer,” he said.