AJC report highlights the dangers of Georgia State Patrol's pursuit policy

Georgia State Police engage in a pursuit of a suspect somewhere in the state nearly every day. A new investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution finds that Georgia has the highest percentage of people who die in police pursuits, and that often includes innocent bystanders. The investigation also found that Georgia’s policy on when to pursue a fleeing suspect is among the most lenient. Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative reporter Asia Simone Burns and data journalist Justin Price spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello about their work.

Peter Biello: We'll start with you, Asia. You profile one family who suffered an awful loss not far from where we're having this conversation, in Midtown Atlanta. Broadly speaking, can you tell us what happened to them?

Asia Simone Burns: Yes. It was actually eerie: On the way here, I passed the location where all this happened. So in 2020, we had Fredricia Kane. She was in a car that she had bought maybe a month prior. In the backseat was her 18-year-old sister, Anjanae McClain, and driving was her then-boyfriend, Jamal Benson. Also in the backseat were Jamal's niece and his ... great nephew, who's three months old. They were having a relatively normal day. They were heading back from a restaurant. And while they were sitting at a red light, a car came out of nowhere, smashed into the side of them, and left two of the people in that car dead.

Peter Biello: And that car had been the subject of a police pursuit.

Asia Simone Burns: Yes. The fleeing car was a subject of police pursuit. The person who was driving the car started in Cobb County. A trooper said that he spotted him, saw that he was speeding, and tried to catch up with him. And that pursuit that started in Cobb County ended up spilling over into Midtown.

Peter Biello: So high rate of speed: That's as — that's as much as they knew about the suspect at the time, that they were just speeding?

Asia Simone Burns: At the time, yes.

Peter Biello: Mm-hmm. What was the policy that was guiding the state trooper in making the decision to pursue someone who was already going very, very fast on I-75?

Asia Simone Burns: It's different from a lot of policies from similar agencies. We looked at 44 pursuit policies, actually, from highway patrols across the country. A lot of highway patrols, you see in their policies, they have certain offenses that you have to consider and you can pursue if you suspect that somebody, let's say, has committed a forcible felony, attempted murder, battery, those sorts of things. The Georgia State Patrol's policy doesn't have anything like that in it. You can pursue over any offense.

Peter Biello: Like a broken taillight, they can pursue someone —

Asia Simone Burns: Like a broken taillight. Exactly. And this policy is one of the most permissive that we saw in the entire country. The only one that actually compares is Texas.

Peter Biello: Justin, how deadly are pursuits in Georgia compared to other states?

Justin Price: So we looked at a period of five years beginning in 2019 through 2023. And we were able to count 1,900 injuries and 63 deaths over that period. Half the people who are injured are bystanders or passengers who are in the vehicles that are fleeing. And then the other half are the drivers of the vehicles who are — who are running.

Peter Biello: And how do these injuries typically occur? Are there accidents like the one we just heard about from Asia, or is it the way Georgia State Patrol conducts the chase part of the cause?

Justin Price: It can be both, because the Georgia State Patrol doesn't put many restrictions on the reasons that a pursuit can take place, and the actions that a trooper can take during a pursuit. What typically happens is a pursuit will continue to the point of a crash, whether that's an accidental crash that happens over the course of a high-speed pursuit — someone runs into another vehicle, as we wrote about in the Midtown case — or a trooper will use a tactic that's known as the "precision immobilization technique." Typically, people call it the PIT maneuver.

Peter Biello: That's like tapping the car on the rear quarter panel, essentially putting it into a spin, which is a very dangerous thing to do.

Justin Price: It's very dangerous at high speeds. A lot of agencies that we looked at — their policies restrict the use of the PIT maneuver above certain speeds. So anything above 40 or 50 mph, for example, would be out of out of line in their policy. Whereas with the Georgia State Patrol, there is no restriction on the speed at which a PIT maneuver could be used. When done at excessive speeds, the trajectory of the vehicle that's being spun out is completely unpredictable, and typically the vehicles are left completely totaled and the people inside are often injured in those cases.

Peter Biello: You asked Georgia State Patrol about what you found. How did they respond to you?

Asia Simone Burns: We actually, prior to our story coming out, sent them virtually all of our findings. From that, the Georgia State Patrol did send us a response that we published in full on our website. Largely, what the statement said was that the GSP was standing behind its policy, that it's rooted in case law and that their policy — I believe that the phrase that they use—J ustin, you'll have to correct me here — is proportionately appropriate to the rise in crime in Atlanta. They also said that this is a compliance issue, that if people would stop fleeing from police, then there wouldn't be any pursuits.

Peter Biello: That was an interesting part of their response, because it occurred to me that, you know, they could make that choice to not comply and not pull over when those lights go on. But to chase them is to, in effect, have some effect on their behavior, right? They speed up. Did the state account for the fact that their pursuit may in fact make things worse?

Asia Simone Burns: Well, the state actually did not directly address any of our findings and didn't dispute anything that we laid out in our story. What they did have to say about that was getting back to the compliance issue. We also spoke to some experts, though, one of them being Lawrence Miller. He is a forensic psychologist in Florida, and he has worked with law enforcement departments. What he said about that is that during a pursuit, both parties stand the chance of having their adrenaline coursing and having that adrenal reaction, where, you know, for somebody who's fleeing, they have more of a fight-or-flight prey response. And the trooper is reacting in very much the same way where he potentially can view his surroundings as being more dangerous than they are.

Justin Price: That decision making that can be affected by adrenaline isn't checked by anyone at the GSP. So in other agencies, they're aware of this effect on a trooper. They refer to it as tunnel vision. It can have an effect on your decision-making. So they will require, typically — every other state except for Texas and Georgia — they're the only two states that do not require a supervisor to be involved in the decision making during a pursuit.