By Police1 Staff
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The final report commissioned under the IACP Police Pursuit Database Project discusses the balance between prevention and safety as well as the demands of proactive police innovations related to police pursuit strategies. Through data analyzed by the IACP, the report provides reviews of existing studies of police pursuits, a discussion of contemporary pursuit policies, and presents a broad framework for thinking about pursuits in today’s age of technological innovation.
The report, researched and authored by Dr. Cynthia Lum and George Fachner from George Mason University, highlights how important it is to continue researching and discussing police pursuits.
In the past decade alone, there has been a huge shift in police policies that requires holding more and more officers accountable for their actions. The changing paradigms – proactive policing as well as the increased use of information, analysis, and technology – provides “a contemporary context for police pursuits…[improving] the ability of police to monitor, analyze and assess pursuit practices.”
The IACP recommends agencies should “center around improving and increasing the reporting of pursuits, and the collection standardization, analysis, and utilization of pursuit data to reduce negative outcomes, to increase the ability of agencies to address crime, and to increase the accountability and legitimacy of police departments.”
Recommendations for police departments can be found on page 82 of the report.
The bottom line? The IACP report says that police agencies should focus on accurate, consistent, and comprehensive collection of police pursuit reports.