How To... AMAURY MURGADO
HOW TO COMMUNICATE DURING A PURSUIT Everybody involved in a pursuit needs to know their roles, and everyone not involved needs to stay off the primary radio channel.
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RADIO DISCIPLINE Pursuits tend to start the same way. The suspect fails to obey a lawful command and flees the scene in order to escape the situation. Typically, the initial radio traffic with dispatch goes very well. All it takes is a quick transmission stating they're not stopping or they just sped off to get the ball rolling. Once that's done, however, it seems that everyone else in the world wants to make their presence known. Backup officers attempt to respond between those who are working, those working off-duty jobs that are close by, and sometimes even those who are off-duty but in the area. That's just the first wave. The second wave consists of supervisors. These include first and second line supervisors along with the occasional command staff officer. None of them are doing anything malicious but if not careful, end up impeding the flow of communication. The truth is, everyone not directly involved in the pursuit (actual or by policy) needs to stay off the primary channel. The key to effective communication during a pursuit is having radio discipline. The only three people that need to be talking on the primary channel (where the pursuit is unfolding) are the officer involved in the pursuit, the pursuit supervisor, and dispatch. If you don't limit your radio traffic to those three, critical information will be delayed as officers step all over each other on the radio. If everyone trying to talk on the radio is not bad enough, there are also sometimes officers who aren't paying attention to their radios. It's easy to tell when that happens because they come on the channel to advise something trivial that has nothing to do with the pursuit, like telling the PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
ack in 2014, USA TODAY did an analysis of federal crash data involving police pursuits between 1979 and 2013. The data showed at least 11,506 people, including 6,300 fleeing suspects, were killed in police chases; that was an average of 329 a year — nearly one person a day. The reporters also found that more than 5,000 bystanders and passengers had been killed and tens of thousands more were injured. Most bystanders were killed in their own cars, by a fleeing driver. The immediate takeaway from this analysis is police pursuits are serious business and should be treated with reverence. Though there are many aspects of a pursuit that need dissecting, the one that consistently falls short is communication. Let's be honest, radio procedure during emergency traffic tends to leave a lot to be desired.
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POLICE JULY 2017