Editor’s Note: In part one of this exclusive two-part report by Police1 Senior Contributor Charles Remsberg, we examine five typical flight patterns of offenders running from police. On Wednesday, March 25th, Remsberg returns to reveal five of the unexpected tricks suspects are using today to defeat officers within a containment area, including how they bluff their way past the very officers who are searching for them.
How do suspects fleeing on foot defeat pursuing officers? Jack Schonely knows exactly how. Hovering over the mean streets of Los Angeles at the controls of an LAPD helicopter, he watches lawbreakers running from cops nearly on a nightly basis.
During more than a decade of this eye-in-the-sky observation, he has tracked the behavior patterns of quarry and hunters alike across hundreds of chases. And from contacts with officers from multiple agencies who attend his popular classes in pursuit tactics he has confirmed that what he sees on the West Coast is duplicated across the country.
“Every mistake I see officers making, I’ve made myself many times,” says Schonely, who spent more than 17 years in ground patrol and K-9 handling before taking to the air. “Suspects are thinking about every tool we have and how to outwit us. Their tactics have evolved, and in many cases officers haven’t kept up.”
In exclusive interviews with Police1 recently, Schonely, author of the book Apprehending Fleeing Suspects, identified 10 ploys suspects are currently using to evade capture in foot pursuits. Here, he explains five common patterns of flight that suspects use in defeating pursuing officers.
“Not every chase fits the prevailing patterns. There are no guarantees,” he says. “But on the whole, the more you understand these tendencies, the better your chances of catching the suspect you’re after—and staying safe in the process.”
1. Running straight through. “Suspects have learned from experience that when they stop and hide during a foot chase, they often end up getting sniffed out by K-9,” Schonely says. “They don’t like being bitten, so increasingly the hard-core types who’ve been around are trying to outrun the establishment of a containment perimeter.”
When a suspect disappears from sight, officers often seal off only one block and concentrate on the area where they last saw him. “This is the number one error of cops,” Schonely says. “They get tunnel vision in the heat of battle.
“The suspect wants you to focus on a place that isn’t really in play any more. Meanwhile, he may run straight through several blocks. It takes only 10 to 20 seconds to cross a block. By the time you ask for a one-block containment, he may already be in the second block. He may even run straight through a house, and officers coming along behind get tied up thinking they’ve now got a barricade situation with the suspect still inside.
“If a suspect is able to cross one street undetected, his chances of getting away go way up. So broaden the net. In reality, a five-block containment may not be too much for a very desperate suspect. And if you’ve got the manpower, position some units in the middle of blocks and watch for him, not just at corners.”
2. Taking the easy way. Some years ago, a study from Canada suggested that suspects are driven by predictable subconscious instincts in making left- or right-hand turns during a chase. Schonely doesn’t buy it.
“Particularly if the suspect is out of his own neighborhood and has no definite destination in mind, his path of flight will follow primarily the path of least resistance,” he says. “He makes decisions on the fly that most often have to do with the obstacles he encounters.
“If he comes to where he has a fence with razor wire on the right, a yard with a pitbull straight ahead, and a low fence on the left, the probability is he’ll go left—unless, of course, his girlfriend’s house is off to the right. Then he might take on the razor wire.”
He recalls a foot chase he witnessed in Florida during a chopper ride-along. Ground officers were after an auto thief who’d bailed at the end of a rural road. West of the abandoned car was a canal, north was a swamp, and east was a narrow, dirt ATV path. “The officers were searching everywhere but east,” Schonely says, “yet that was the easiest escape route. And as it turned out, the suspect had run right along it.
“Suspects tend to avoid things that take time and effort. They generally don’t run very far up hill, for example. They’ll go down hills or parallel them. They want to go fast, to put as much distance between you and themselves as possible.”
3. Doubling back. “Just because a suspect was running in one direction the last time you saw him doesn’t mean he’ll continue that way once he’s out of your sight,” Schonely says. “When you radio that he was eastbound when you lost him, all the resources tend to get concentrated to the east and the possibility of him U-turning back west gets forgotten.”
Double-backs are easy in darkness or in complex settings with ready opportunities for concealment. “It can be as simple as running all the way around a house and sneaking back across a street when the coast is clear. Some suspects may even hop back into a car they’ve bailed out of. Or worse, they hop into the patrol car you’ve left to chase them!”
Bottom line: Don’t forget your ‘6.’ Schonely remembers one nighttime search for an “most wanted” armed felon that concentrated at the end of a large park where the suspect was last seen. An air unit eventually spotted him—as far at the opposite end as he could get. He’d doubled back right past his pursuers, his movement hidden completely by darkness and underbrush.
4. Running until confronted. A suspect may be racing to escape, but suddenly he perceives that he’s about to be confronted by law enforcement—he hears sirens nearby, sees lights bouncing off a building, or hears rotor blades overhead—and now he hides, even though he hadn’t planned to.
“This can be the most dangerous scenario for you,” Schonely warns, “because he’s likely to hide close to where you are. He can sit in the bushes and watch you. It happens more often than cops are ever aware of.”
He tells a chilling story about a suspect who fled on foot and quickly disappeared into an urban neighborhood after exchanging shots with officers at the end of a vehicle pursuit. A two-officer unit pulled up for perimeter surveillance. One officer, a rookie, started to get out to move to cover, but his partner ordered him back in the car where it was warmer.
To their surprise, gunfire erupted again when a K-9 team located the suspect—hiding under a van just a few feet away from them. He was killed with a shotgun blast to the face. Flying debris, including some of his teeth, hit the unit with the officers inside.
“He’d apparently dived under the van when he saw them pull up,” Schonely says. “He watched them for a long time, and they never knew he was there.
“It’s not safe to sit in your patrol car while a search is going on. At night, the ambient light from your computer will light you up as an easy target. A suspect in flight can perceive you as a problem and you won’t even know it. If he’s armed, you’re definitely at risk.
“Get out and grab cover. If you’re not in the pursuit itself, your job is observance and deterrence.”
5. Moving within containment. “Officers often think that once a perimeter is set, especially if air support is overhead, that the suspect is going to stay pinned down if he’s within the containment zone. That’s a myth that causes complacency and encourages officers to let their guard down,” Schonely states.
“Many suspects have learned how to move inside the perimeter, and they do. They exploit what’s called ‘the back side of orbit.’ In other words, they wait until they cannot see the airship, let’s say, because it is out of view behind trees or buildings. They know that if they can’t see the helicopter, it can’t see them either. Then they move.
“Small increments add up. I’ve known suspects who’ve traveled a block or more by moving just 10 feet at a time. It may take them an hour, but even with night vision, air power, K-9, and infrared equipment deployed, they manage to move without detection. If they try a full-out run, they’ll be seen. But if they’re patient, they can probe for points of vulnerability gradually and beat our assets.
“The message is: Stay alert, stay diligent. No subject should be considered ‘pinned down’ until he’s in custody.”
For more information on Jack Schonely’s training classes and his book Apprehending Fleeing Suspects: Suspect Tactics and Perimeter Containment, click here.
