Risky, high-speed chases explode under Memphis Safe Task Force

This story is republished with permission from The Institute for Public Service Reporting Memphis. Read the original story here.

The driver hit the gas, racing his blue Chevy Malibu through the streets of Memphis’ Whitehaven community for a quarter-hour with three highway patrol cars in hot pursuit. 

Seventeen minutes into the chase — initiated after the driver failed to dim his bright lights — things turned chaotic. A state trooper “began to attempt to box the blue malibu in and end the pursuit,” according to a second trooper’s affidavit filed in General Sessions criminal court. But the fleeing vehicle — with a mother and infant child on board — “swerved and struck” the trooper’s car, which “came to a final rest after striking a telephone pole.’’

The chase continued. 

It finally ended when a third trooper “demonstrated a tactical vehicle intervention,” striking the Malibu and “causing (it) to come to (a) final rest after striking a tree.” The affidavit doesn’t detail what injuries, if any, resulted from the two crashes.

The October incident is one in a flurry of volatile, high-speed law enforcement chases here since President Trump launched the Memphis Safe Task Force, which has deployed hundreds of federal agents, National Guard personnel and state troopers onto local streets “to enhance public safety in Memphis.”

But an investigation by the Institute for Public Service Reporting in collaboration with Lighthouse Reports found the Safe Task Force surge has created public safety threats of its own with dozens of risky, at times accident-triggering vehicle pursuits, often initiated following infractions as minor as a missing headlight or a broken taillight or driving without a seatbelt.

Analyzing arrest affidavits, The Institute identified 75 vehicle pursuits over the task force’s first five weeks of operation, from Sept. 29 to Nov. 3.

At that rate, an average of more than two per day, the task force would tally 780 vehicle pursuits in a year — a remarkable number considering the Memphis Police Department has averaged 144 pursuits annually in recent years, an average of 2-3 per week.

The Institute’s analysis found that the overwhelming majority of the task force’s vehicle pursuits — 66 (88 percent) — were conducted by the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP), which has mushroomed in size here since September when Gov. Bill Lee began sending scores of troopers to Memphis to aid the surge.

MPD conducted eight of the chases and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office conducted one.

In all, 32 of the 75 chases (43 percent) resulted in accidents. Twenty-nine of those accidents (91 percent) involved chases by THP.

The affidavits, filed to convince judicial commissioners there is evidence of a crime, often are silent on the number and severity of injuries. A man died in a chase last month, outside The Institute’s period of review, but it’s unclear which agency led the chase.

Arrest affidavits reviewed by The Institute describe many aggressive encounters between motorists and THP, which appears to have a vehicle pursuit policy that is more permissive than those of many law enforcement agencies.

Troopers engaged in pursuits often exceeding 100 mph, affidavits show, chasing fleeing motorists down freeways, through red lights on city streets and into residential neighborhoods — followed at times by immigration agents and other federal officers who joined foot chases after fleeing Hispanic men bailed out of their cars and began to run.

“They are so scary,’’ said Star Lee Lewis, 21, who witnessed the aftermath of a THP chase that ended in a crash just last week outside her home in southeast Memphis.

Read the full story at The Institute for Public Service Reporting Memphis.