Forget the chase for a minute. The most interesting part of what happened outside Madison, Wisconsin isn’t the sirens, the spike strip, or even the dog that bolted from a stolen Cadillac and landed in an animal shelter. It’s a single clause buried in Wisconsin’s criminal code, one that quietly grades car theft on a curve, and explains why the driver behind all this chaos may have just talked her way out of the best deal state law had to offer, without even realizing it.
Here’s what happened, according to the Dane County Sheriff’s Office and a report from WMTV15 News. A deputy spotted a stolen Cadillac sedan heading west on Madison’s Beltline on a Friday afternoon. He looped in Monona police, Madison police, and the Wisconsin State Patrol, and the group trailed the car before starting a pursuit. When the driver exited at John Nolen Drive, officials called off the chase for public safety, a fairly standard move once a pursuit starts weaving through populated streets. Patrols kept hunting for the Cadillac anyway.
They found it. The driver, according to DCSO, kept speeding and driving erratically, and at some point hit an uninvolved vehicle, causing damage. Madison police eventually put down a tire deflation device on Atwood Avenue, and the Cadillac finally stopped in the 4200 block of Buckeye Road. The driver ran. So did her dog. Both were caught a few blocks later on Hegg Avenue. The dog was taken to the Dane County Humane Society. The driver, identified as 39-year-old Jessica Mielke of Madison, was booked into the Dane County Jail, facing charges of operating a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent, possession of cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia, and knowingly fleeing an officer. Officers reportedly found cocaine and paraphernalia inside the car…