A Constitutional right to flee police?

Terence Jeffrey:

To understand what Timothy Scott did, you must first understand what Victor Harris did not do.

At about 10:45 on the night of March 29, 2001, Harris was driving his Cadillac at 73 miles per hour down a two-lane highway where the limit was 55. Coweta County, Ga., Deputy Sheriff Clinton Reynolds, waiting by the side of the road as backup for a drug sting unfolding nearby, flashed his blue lights at Harris to get him to slow down.

Harris did not.

Reynolds turned on his siren, pulled onto the highway and tried to get Harris to pull over.

Harris did not.

Instead, according to a brief that the U.S. solicitor general filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, Harris sped up, driving "in excess of 100 miles per hour" in the direction of the neighborhoods and shopping districts of Peachtree City, Ga.

Reynolds told a dispatcher he was chasing the Cadillac. Deputy Timothy Scott -- who was also waiting as backup for the drug sting, and who was not told whether the fleeing Cadillac had anything to do with the sting -- took off to assist Reynolds.

With both deputies pursuing, Harris hurtled into Peachtree City, turned into the parking lot of a shopping center and drove past two parked squad cars with policemen inside. Scott raced around the periphery of the lot on city streets, hoping to block Harris at the exit.

Here there is a factual dispute: Did the Cadillac collide with the deputy's car, or did the deputy's car collide with the Cadillac? There is no dispute, however, about whether Harris stopped after the collision.

He did not.

Instead, he fled up another highway "reaching speeds of at least 90 miles per hour."

There is also no dispute about whether Harris should have refrained, as he was fleeing, from repeatedly crossing double-yellow lines and passing cars on the wrong side of the highway. He did not.

Nor is there a dispute about whether Harris stopped when he came to red lights. He did not.

Now, it could have been that I would be writing today that this chase ended when Harris drove his Cadillac head-on into a van full of high school kids.

He did not -- thank God. He killed no one that night.

You see, Deputy Scott made a decision. Realizing Harris posed a threat to innocent people, he secured approval from his supervisor to try to stop Harris with a "Precision Intervention Technique," which is designed to bump a fleeing vehicle at such an angle that it spins to stop. Because Harris was driving so fast, however, Scott could only manage to bump the Cadillac in the rear. He waited to do so where the road was flat and free of traffic.

...

Harris found a trial lawyer to sue Scott and federal courts invented a right to flee. Now the case is before the Supremes and hopefully they will put a stop to this nonsense. While the cases relied on by the lower courts were suppose to protect people from abusive police, this case indicates that their rulings have endangered the public by encouraging bad behavior by people who are violating the law.