The police vehicle pursuit has largely gone the way of the prairie buffalo, or perhaps the Florida panther. Though one might hear an old-timer spin a yarn about one, they seem to have faded away, hunted to near-extinction by the American legal system.

More and more departments have severely restricted police pursuits. While policies differ widely across the nation’s decentralized policing system, the idea that the need to immediately apprehend a fleeing motorist must outweigh the risk created by the pursuit has become the rule of thumb.

According to Chris Loftis, the communications director at the Washington State Patrol, “the word is out. ‘The cops can’t chase you.’”

In many cases, the shift is a good one. After all, no one wants to kill a school bus full of children in pursuit of a motorist who refused to stop after failing to use their left turn signal. Common sense should prevail, as in any law enforcement policy decision. Still, it’s not a simple issue. What if an officer doesn’t pursue an offender, who goes on to harm a citizen? Besides, criminals are often surprisingly rational. What if they simply learn that they can ignore flashing police lights with impunity?

These are questions that any anxious road cop will likely ask their administrator when a restrictive pursuit policy is implemented, but they’re currently playing out in real time in Washington. In 2021, the state passed a law that proved to be somewhat controversial. Not content with allowing police administrators to set pursuit guidelines via departmental policy, the Legislature set restrictions in a state law, raising the evidence threshold to require probable cause to initiate a pursuit. While the law may look a lot like a departmental policy, its passage had all the markings of politically charged legislation. As noted by King 5 News, the passage of the law was accompanied by criticism of pursuits and claims that they tended to be racist in nature.

After the law took effect, law enforcement agencies noted that folks just weren’t stopping for their blue lights anymore. According to Chris Loftis, the communications director at the Washington State Patrol, “the word is out. ‘The cops can’t chase you’… It [people refusing to stop for officers] went from a number so low that we didn’t need to code it to something in the thousands that first year.”

Overall, the agency says it recorded nearly 8,000 incidents of drivers refusing to stop for troopers between July 26, 2021, and March 31, 2024. Even small local departments noted an effect. During that same time period, the 100-member Lakewood Police Department saw 727 drivers flee from officers, a number Assistant Chief John Unfred called “way off the charts.”

It wasn’t just the officers’ egos that took a beating from the new law, either. Loftis also points out that various crimes (especially property-related ones) have increased. And while the more restrictive law might seem safer for the public, not pursuing a car might sometimes actually make things worse for citizens. In 2023, a man named Keith Goings killed an 8-year-old girl and her 6-year-old brother when he caused a head-on collision. An hour prior, Washington state troopers had tried to stop Goings several times. Despite his extremely reckless driving, they were unable to stop him due to the rules set by the Legislature.

Lawmakers attempted to correct the damage last year by lowering the pursuit threshold to reasonable suspicion for limited crimes, including violent offense, sex offense, DUI, vehicular assault and domestic violence assault. But public safety agencies didn’t see much of an impact on the problem, so another law went into effect on June 6 that will undo the 2021 change, once again allowing officers to chase any driver if they have reasonable suspicion they have violated the law, when they consider it safe to do so. Whether the renewed ability of agencies to make their own policies will undo the damage done remains to be seen, but officers are hopeful.

Unfred said his agency started noticing a difference as soon as the new measure passed the Legislature. “Eludings have dropped significantly,” he told King 5 a few days before the legislation officially took effect. “So I think the word is already out there with the suspects that the law has changed, and you have to be careful.”