Howdy All,

Let me preface this by saying my uncle is a police officer in Lakewood, Ohio. This is the dash-cam footage of a chase he was involved in over a year ago (he finally posted it around June).

He was doing speed enforcement via radar on Arthur Ave. when he saw the black Cavalier go by at 46 MPH, he gave chase and it finally ended at the corner of Detroit and 116th street in Cleveland, just seconds after the chase was supposed to be called off as Lakewood jurisdiction technically ends at 117th street.

My uncle is the one who removed the guy from the car at the end. The dash cam footage isn't the greatest in quality but you can definitely see what's going on. Video link is below. Please note, the cars aren't moving as fast as they seem, the dash camera has a low frame rate and gets choppy - the cops' speeds never went higher than 60, not saying so for the car he was pursuing.

 

Hi `Mike,
Reckless Endangerment 4-Sure by both drivers....
It's great that no innocent people were killed in this chase 4-Real...

Sadly there are too many drivers out on our highways that should be locked up and the key thrown away...

It was a very exciting chase, & that Chevy ran pretty good against the police cruiser ... I wonder `if the driver is again out on the road ?

Thanks for posting/sharing & reminding us that there are crazy out there driving & to drive defensely & stay alert.

Your uncle & all police officers have a very dangerous job having to deal with dangerous human beings...

 

Pretty crazy!
They just changed the law here in Louisville so the please do not do high speed pursuits in non-violent crimes because several bystanders have been killed recently.

 

Wow all that over a minor speeding infraction... I think most of the other cars were doing about the same speed on that road he was running radar on. That whole chase escalated once everyone's blood pressure got up there. Can't you see all the lives they both put in danger? The whole chase was ridiculous, it's quite obvious the guy being pursued was not impaired very much if he could handle his vehicle like that. Agreed the guy should have pulled over immediately, but the cop should have terminated the pursuit and called it a day instead of pushing the threshold and blowing red lights himself. Sometimes one has to know when it's not worth it, instead of being "Your not getting away from me sucker, no matter what!!". I disagree with the cop's decision. When I was home on leave from the Army I used to ride with my brother who was a city cop in Springfield Ill. and he would be like "Watch this!!" and pull people over for stupid things and later tell me "Ha I don't give a damn about them, just to get a laugh out of me, and I never did. I still hate dumb traffic stops........ Your Uncle is lucky he walked away from this and not ended up with his partner or himself a cripple or dead.... I say this was totally B.S. Sorry but thats how I see this....

 

Very intense for sure! Narrow roads, blind turns.

My view to the chase is this, if they run, they have something to hide.
Sure, I don't like getting any tickets, but if I know I was speeding I will take the citation, why run?

Jeopardize my life or others for trying to avoid a ticket? Never.

 

If you listen to what he's saying, he called the license plate over to the dispatcher about 30 seconds into the video. Not even 2 minutes later he asked again what the plate was coming back as. He told the dispatcher to try to contact the owner "so that we can call this thing off."

The chase was then called off when speeds approached over 60mph - but after the initial crash, which was close to a pedestrian, they stayed in pursuit.

The guy crashed on 2 separate occasions, when the cops weren't even near him - and after he crashed they kept quite a large gap behind him. He wasn't going hell bent as you can see when the one guy blew through the intersection in front of the cop car.

The driver tested positive for high levels of cocaine, which pretty much meant that he probably was hopped up enough that he wouldn't have slowed down just because the cops pulled back. Just about every high speed chase is over a non-violent crime, usually because the driver is hopped up on drugs and wants to run, should we never chase someone who refuses to stop unless they just shot someone?



This was actually the second chase to occur in Lakewood that month, the first one ended in a crash that injured a bystander when the guy running crashed into the innocent guys car, after police terminated the pursuit by the way, maybe that's why they tried to stay with this one.

 

The Cavalier was the first car that he spotted (as seen in the video) he simply waited for the Sable to be clear before pursuing the Cavalier. Secondly, he was going 46, that's considered reckless operation. If the Sable wasn't going as fast it's simply a minor misdemeanor. If it was just a speeding infraction, why would the driver run so hard?

 

When it comes to burying people over a car chase for a traffic infraction, I say call of the chase when it gets to that level. Even though he crashed twice, he still did a heck of a job as he probably never drove like that before, where as the officer has had training to operate his vehicle at extreme levels. I don't like that the guy was on Coke, but that explains why he got so energized over this and could not back off... What was the cops reason for not backing off when it was obvious he knew he was blowing red lights and compromising innocent lives... he could have terminated and no one would have blamed him after watching the video. They had the guys license plate number, went to his home later and did an investigation... 2 wrongs dont make a right.....

 

Phone number attached to the plate was disconnected, so they couldn't determine that the plates were valid right away - but as I said in the post above (that I edited after you posted) the chase was called off BEFORE the initial crash because the speeds approached double the posted speed limit. But they kept back up after he crashed.

 

I understand, it's just VERY fortunate the whole incident ended the way it did. Hope everyone learned something off of this, including the police after viewing the footage and understand how much more tragic this could have been, as this was no lonely country road. Take care bro, lol, neither of us wants anyone to get hurt unnecessarily.....