[Blue Lives Matter] Atlanta, GA ‐ Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced on Friday that, effective immediately, the Atlanta Police Department has a "no-chase policy."Chief Shields faced off with reporters after an internal email she sent out to the entire police department on Friday morning was leaked to the media.
In the email, the chief pointed to the failure of the judicial system as a key reason for changing the department’s chase policy, WGCL reported.
A 'judicial system' based on white man's law is obviously destined to fail.
She told reporters the same thing.
"I don’t want to see us cost someone their life in pursuit of an auto theft person or a burglar when the court’s not even going to hold them accountable," Chief Shields said. "I mean how can we justify that? And I think we are better than that."
"It goes back to the repeat offender issue," the chief continued. "Okay, we get the person in custody and we look at how many times have we arrested them?"
"If nothing is happening to the individuals when we’re locking them up, and yet we’re absorbing this level of risk and liability ‐ I mean that just is not a good business model. I’d rather we put better emphasis on our investigative techniques," she told reporters.
Critics have called the policy change a knee-jerk reaction to criticism of the police department’s handling of incidents where civilians were seriously hurt or killed by suspects driving at high speeds to evade police, WGCL reported.
The chief explained that Atlanta PD having a restrictive chase policy was nothing new.
"Just to summarize, we’ve had a restrictive pursuit policy for many years... but we’ve had a few incidences when the officers are rightfully pursuing ‐ they’re in line with state law, they’re in line with policy ‐ but the pursuit itself is just not essential. Not given the risk reward that goes with engaging in a pursuit. And I just feel as though we need to step back and make the policy even more restrictive," Chief Shields said.