By Ashley Silver
Police1
PORTLAND, Texas — With a rise in wrong-way crashes resulting in injury or death, Texas officers are taking a tougher approach to protect the public from reckless drivers.
What’s the department’s plan? Portland (Texas) Police Chief Mark Cory spoke with KIII News to share details: “We try to get our units down there as they come off the causeway and set up spike strips in an attempt to get the wrong-way driver to stop there. If that doesn’t work, I’ve given the order to all of our officers to ram that vehicle off the roadway.”
Cory’s officers have been putting decisive counter-maneuvers in place for the past year-and-a-half to force wrong-way drivers who refuse to stop off the road, according to KIII News.
“Our officers make the decision to take decisive action to take these vehicles off the roadway,” he told the news outlet.
Last week, Cory said a wrong-way driver killed two people in San Patricio County before officers could arrive. One of the victims was San Patricio County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher Betsy Mandujano.
“We got to do something,” San Patricio County Sheriff Oscar Rivera told KIII News. “This is not going to work. Who’s next?”
Cory said the department responds to around half a dozen wrong-way driving incidents every year and feels an obligation to remove those vehicles from the road as fast as possible – even if that means ramming them to save lives.
“So when people ask me, ‘Chief, why do y’all ram these vehicles with your $70,000 patrol cars?’ and I pull this picture right there … that’s why we ram vehicles to prevent that from happening.”
RELATED: New tech aims to stop wrong-way drivers in their tracks