The Oakland Police Commission voted unanimously to change the city’s police pursuit policy to allow high-speed chases on city streets under certain conditions.
The policy still only allows chases for violent crimes and crimes involving the use or possession of guns, but does away with a rule that required officers to ask for permission before continuing a pursuit that reached 50 mph.
“At its core, it’s balancing out the debate of safety in the community and the dangers, the inherent dangers, of pursuits against the need to apprehend potential criminals in the streets and to change the narrative that we see commonly on the streets that folks could take off above 50 miles an hour and not get chased, essentially leading to some of the misrepresentation of this policy as a no-chase policy,” said Police Commission chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta…