29. Police Pursuit.

"Running from police was a mistake that unnecessarily cost 18-year-old Montrell Mucker his life, his family said yesterday. "It was a mistake a lot of young people make," said Joyce Mucker, his grandmother."

That's how a Courier-Journal story begins today, with questions from the grandmother of Montrell Mucker, an 18 year old, who broke the law, then tried to outrun the police on foot, after bailing out of the car he was driving. He died of injuries sustained when the police cruiser chasing him apparently hit him. From the pictures on the news, the cruiser was up on the curb when it came to a stop. The "accident" occurred in an African-American neighborhood at 23rd and Dumesnil streets, where Dumesnil becomes a narrow one driving-lane street, after making the curve around the northside of the Lyman T. Johnson Middle School. As a cross-street, 23rd is similarly narrow. I'd be asking questions, too, the main one being why were the police chasing someone with a car, who themself was on foot? But asking questions of the police department in this town somehow makes someone unpatriotic, or soft on crime, or another such negative connotation. Several weeks ago, someone, another person breaking the law, being pursued by the police ran the redlight at 1st and Breckinridge streets and struck three small children, killing one of them who was eleven years old.

In each of these events, the persons being chased were black. And, the child killed at 1st and Breckinridge was also black. Police chase white lawbreakers as well, with the same tragic results. On Wednesday morning, July 24, 1991, police were in pursuit of two white males on a stolen motorcycle, one of whom was not wearing a helmet, at the time a violation of the law. The police knew the passenger did not have a helmet. According to reports at the time, the chase advanced to speeds of 80 miles per hour through Germantown and Old Louisville before heading out Preston Highway. At Standiford Lane and Preston, the motorcylcle slammed into a truck broadside and 17 year old Joseph Robert Spears, the passenger, died.

It is appropriate to point out that in the deaths of these two teenagers, Mr. Mucker yesterday, and Mr. Spears in 1991, both were being chased because they had violated the law. Both lost their lives as a direct result of their own actions. The death of Demetra Boyd on January 6th was an unforutnate instance of the girl simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the time happening to be when Donta Jones, who had stolen a purse on 4th Street, was being hotly pursued by police through the streets of downtown Louisville.

One question which should be asked is what, if any, guidelines are there which determine if pursuit at high speeds on city streets are absolutely necessary. Does stealing a purse justify a high-speed chase ending in the death of an eleven year old? Does stealing a motorcycle justify a high-speed chase ending in the death of a seventeen year old, albeit one of the two persons who stole the bike? In my opinion, an opinion which is likely to find disagreement among some of my readers, the answers is "maybe, maybe not." That is to say, I don't have a good answer. I understand and support the idea that the police need the tools necessary to solve to solve crimes and that not having the tools necessary to do so causes their work to go unfinished and inevitably heaps on them an equal amount of criticism.

Having worked in and around the corner of Sixth and Jefferson streets (the government hub for Louisville-Jefferson County Metro) for most of my life, I have many friends in the law enforcement business, whether they be Metro police, deputy sheriffs, or commonwealth's investigators. I myself was a deputy sheriff very young in my life. I have only a few, maybe three, police officers who I would call close personal friends. I know their demeanor as an individual is different from that as a police officer. And they do a job very few of us would, but they are also very well paid if they stay at it for any period of time. I believe our police officers and sheriffs to be highly trained and I am appreciative of the necessity of such training. But I also believe that it takes a certain type of person to do this type of work, and among those types, some overstep their bounds of authority with regularity.

Everytime I drive an interstate highway, at some point I am passed by either a police cruiser or someone driving a car with one of those FOP license plates. Most often, they pass by me at high rates of speed. Some perhaps are on assignment. Many, obviuously, aren't. They often have their children or wives or husbands (or boyfriends or girlfriends) in the car, and usually are indifferent to others who are driving at the posted speed limit, riding their bumpers until they yield the fast lane to the police. This morning I was en route to a breakfast held in the Highview area. Driving east on the Snyder Freeway from I-65, I was passed by an Audubon Park police car [their cars are incorrectly identified as "City of Audubon" as opposed to "City of Audubon Park," the appropriate name]. When the officer passed me, I was doing about 70, five miles over the posted speed limit - it may even be 55 at that point, I am not sure. The "City of Audubon" cruiser was easily going 80 miles per hour. He exited at Smyrna Parkway, turning south. The City of Audubon Park is a very nice upscale enclave of 100 year old homes for the most part, located between Preston Highway and Poplar Level Road, about 1 and 1/2 miles north of the Watterson Expressway, and approximately ten miles north of where this particular cruiser was driving at speeds well above the speed limit early on a Saturday morning. Why was he going 80 miles an hour on the Snyder Freeway ten miles south of the city from whose tax coffers he draws a paycheck? I have no idea. But it bothers me. But it doesn't bother me nearly as much as when someone is killed while being pursued by the police for some infraction of the law which in my opinion the need would not arise to be in such pursuit, at high speeds through well populated areas.

I understand there are instances when such pursuit is warranted. Whenever the life of someone, including especially a peace officer, is endangered, then pursuit is necessary. Demetra Boyd died because Donta Jones was being pursued after having stolen a purse. Joseph Spears was being pursued initially because the tailight was out on the motorcycle upon which he was riding. It was only after the pursuit began that police found out the bike had been stolen. Montrell Mucker had bailed out of the car in which he was driving erratically (someone else assumed the wheel and has not yet been apprehended) and was on foot when struck and killed by a police cruiser.

The grandmother is asking questions. I think she should be.