Oh I thought I had posted this already but I just scrolled back and didn't see it.
Last week, friday afternoon we're at Junior's baseball game. I see the local news choppa passing overhead.
As we're leaving the game we pass a huge scene, cop cars everywhere, huge wreck, road blocked etc. I notice some of the cop cars are from Bartlett, which is odd because that's a suburb town pretty far from where the wreck was. So it was obvious this must have been a high speed chase that covered a pretty significant distance.
On the news that evening we got more details. The suspected crime that triggered this? Surely it was murder or rape or kidnapping, right?
Nope, it was shoplifting. Crab legs from a supermarket. And apparently this pursuit went through several residential neighborhoods, and the chase concluded about two blocks from a orthodox synagogue. And remember, this was late friday afternoon, the congregation was walking to services at the time. The crash ended in front of the home of a family that was
literally walking out the door to go to services. It's basically a miracle that nobody was hurt.
Now, in between the shoplifting and the crash, however, there are some events that contributed to this.
* The suspects "threatened to kill" anyone that followed them out of the store.
* an officer (possibly a plainclothes detective) approached the suspects at a stop light a few blocks away, the suspects took off (and this is where the chase actually started)
* the day of the chase the news reported that the officer was struck by the suspects' vehicle (and this is apparently what the Bartlett PD used to justify their pursuit when they contacted the Memphis PD for permission to pursue into Memphis jurisdiction) but none of the reports since then have mentioned that.
The best part was in the newspaper a few days later, some guy wrote a letter to the editor pointing out how dangerous this was, and in the comments was this gem:
"you are Socialist that believe criminals should escape the law. My only regret was that the police were not firing their guns at the thieves. This is a typical response from a LIBERAL."
initial news footage:
http://www.wmctv.com/story/14688293/...police-pursuit
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