Salem police last year had the lowest number of car chases in a decade, with officers pursuing vehicles 24 times.
The department started collecting police vehicular pursuit data in 2000, and the number of pursuits fluctuated over the last 10 years with a high of 91 chases in 2017.
The 2023 report, which Salem Police Chief Trevor Womack presented to the city council on July 22, showed a dramatic decrease in police chases from the year prior, when officers recorded 55 chases.
The report showed 10 police pursuits lasted less than one minute and 11 took police on a chase for a mile or less. However, four police pursuits in 2023 spanned more than five miles and three had police on the chase for more than ten minutes.
The police department prepares the vehicular pursuits report each year to give the police chief and command staff the opportunity to review how police officers conduct themselves during vehicle pursuits.
Given the public danger posed by police car chases, the department assesses the data in the report to determine any necessary adjustments in how officers respond when someone flees in a vehicle.
“As you can imagine, for obvious reasons, high speed pursuits are potentially high risk and very high liability events and as such police pursuits require very strong oversight mechanisms and strong policy, strong training,” Womack told city councilors. “This annual report helps us monitor all of our pursuits that do occur and identify trends and take steps to change policy and training as necessary.”
Last year, Portland police loosened restrictions on car chases to discourage suspects from fleeing authorities.
Womack said police car chases in Salem are relatively rare and that the department averaged a couple of pursuits per month. He said the dramatic drop in pursuits in 2023 was the direct result of department policy changes limiting when an officer can pursue a fleeing driver.
“There’s a direct correlation to why. It is a policy change we made as an organization. You are always trying to balance the risk to the public of a pursuit with the public safety risk of apprehending the criminal, or the offender,” Womack said. “Our policy now raised the bar a bit as far as the justifications required to engage in a police pursuit which reduced our number of pursuits, but we think that is a good thing.”
Womack said despite these changes, which include updates on when a pursuit is justified, police are still able to effectively pursue violent criminals.
The annual report showed police initiated the majority of chases as a result of felony crimes, and most fleeing drivers recorded in the data were driving on suspended licenses. The vast majority of drivers police pursued in 2023 were young men between the age of 22 and 40.
Chases most often occurred in business districts and on the highway between the hours of 10 p.m. and 3 a.m., the data showed. That time frame has consistently been the most active time of day for police chases for the past five years, the report said.
Only two drivers were female and the oldest driver recorded was between the age of 41 and 50. One driver was younger than 18, the report showed.
The top speed reached during a police chase in 2023 was over 100 miles per hour with one pursuit reaching those speeds. Four pursuits resulted in crashes in 2023 which is an increase from the year prior which had three crashes as a result of police car chases.
According to the report, the data is generated from reports submitted by the officers involved in the chases.
All police pursuits are reviewed by the division commander before going to a tactics review board.
Department rules added in 2022 restricted when officers can initiate a chase.
“Unless otherwise approved by a supervisor, sworn officers will only initiate a pursuit when the justification for the stop is a violent crime or there is reasonable suspicion the suspect poses an imminent threat of serious physical injury to the public,” the report said. “Officers will not enter into a pursuit when the justification for the stop is only a traffic violation or a non-violent crime.”
The second update was in regards to “boxing in” a fleeing driver, which involves surrounding the vehicle with law enforcement vehicles to get the driver to stop.
“Considerations for boxing in needs to include but is not limited to, the crime being investigated, suspect history if known, the location of the suspect vehicle, and the equipment available to the officers at the time of the boxing in,” the report said.
Police have certain tactics to end police car chases including using special equipment to deflate tires, or by using a police vehicle to hit the fleeing vehicle causing it to spin out of control and come to a stop.
The report showed that the latter tactic, known by police as a “pursuit intervention technique,” was used three times with success. During 11 pursuits police were unable to use the maneuver because the opportunity to do so did not present itself.
Police were able to successfully deflate a fleeing vehicle’s tires in seven of the 24 pursuits. In half of the chases police could not set up the equipment in time to successfully pop a vehicle’s tires.
Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected] or 503-335-7790.
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Joe Siess is a reporter for Salem Reporter. Joe joined Salem Reporter in 2024 and primarily covers city and county government but loves surprises. Joe previously reported for the Redmond Spokesman, the Bulletin in Bend, Klamath Falls Herald and News and the Malheur Enterprise. He was born in Independence, MO, where the Oregon Trail officially starts, and grew up in the Kansas City area.
