Patrol Responsibilities 

One of an officers many duties including patrolling within their jurisdiction. While on patrol you are expected to be following all Legal laws of driving such as driving the speed limit, adhering to traffic signals. While on patrol you may come across some of these circumstances.

1. A Vehicle commiting a traffic violation

2. A Service Call

3. An Officer requesting backup (10-32)

4. An Officer Down Call (10-99)

5. EMS requesting assistance

Active Gang Wars

Due to the possibility of high casualty's of officers, The department requests that during an active gang shootout, all officers remain on the permiter until all shooting has stopped. You are able to flee from the area you able to pursue and detain / question / GSR test. Give a 2 to 3 minute window and then you can move in, and collect downed persons, provide medical aid, gather evidence and make arrests.

Positions of a pursuit

• During a pursuit there are 3 positions

  • Primary unit:
    The Primary Unit's sole responsibility is to maintain visual of the fleeing suspect at all times, whilst keeping other units updated in the case that they lose visual on the pursuit. Primary Unit will also be charged with requesting and executing all offensive maneuvers taken against the suspect vehicle.

  • Secondary Unit:
    The secondary unit will be the 2nd unit in the pursuit and will attempt to maintain a visual on the primary unit and will continue to keep responding units notified of the direction of travel of the pursuit, and will be charged with the planning of road blocks or spike strips.

  • Support Units :
    The support units will be any vehicle behind the secondary unit and will ensure no other vehicles come from the rear of the pursuit to interfere, and will also aid any officer that crashes and is severely injured. The Last support unit will maintain his position with the vehicle in the scenario of a suspect exiting and fleeing on foot after a crash to ensure no outside parties begin tampering with evidence inside.

Units WILL NOT overtake another unit without proper communication before doing so. If the primary or secondary unit crashes, then at that point the units behind them may take over their positions. The crashed unit will stay where he is until all other officers have passed.

Use of Offensive Maneuvers 

• Offensive maneuvers are defined under pits and rams and may only be authorized by the highest ranking official clocked in at the time of the pursuit. 

• Pits may only be authorized after 5 minutes from the beginning of the pursuit OR if the suspect poses an imminent threat to civilians or officers.

• Pits and rams may be used at speeds below 90 mph and conditions considered reasonable that will not seriously injure the suspects, officers, or any other locals or civilians in the immediate area.

• Pits will be used to cause the suspect vehicle to lose control and give officers the ability to box them in.

• Rams will only be utilized at slow speeds to direct the suspect vehicle into a direction of the officers choosing to obscure his direction of travel and immobilize him by pinning him or boxing him. Ramming a suspect vehicle at speeds over 40 mph is prohibited.

• Pits and Rams may be utilized at faster speeds if deadly force is authorized and the suspects are actively shooting from the vehicle at civilians or officers.

 Use of Defensive Maneuvers 

• Defensive maneuvers are utilized to obstruct and mitigate a suspect's speed or direction of travel. This can be achieved by utilizing road blocks or spike strips. Defensive maneuvers may be used at any time with proper communication with the primary or secondary unit in the pursuit.

• Spike strips may be placed along a road to attempt to pop a suspect's vehicle's tires. The unit placing the spike strips must leave an ally of travel and communicate it to the units in the pursuit. Pursuing units may wish to give the suspect more room, in order for the spike strips to be picked up. 

  1. See the Specialized equipment section for more information on Spike Strip usage and rules.

• Road blocks may be utilized using any form of vehicle or obstruction in the road to cause the suspect vehicle to slow down or avoid the obstruction. PD vehicles may be used but must maintain their position until pursuing units have passed.

 Pit timer, and special circumstances

The section below states circumstances in which both pit maneuvers and spike deployment can be utilized and deployed, this both being post minimum timer at 6 minutes and possible actions that advance pursuit progression resulting in a reduced timer and more aggressive tactics.

As previously mentioned there is a pre-set time of 6 minutes for deployment of maneuvers, this is not a hard set limit but is recommended for either first pursuit or less aggressive suspects.

This timer is to only be reduced in some advanced and emergent circumstances while also being authorized by the ranking Sergeant or Above Officer on duty.

The situations below can be given as reason allowing the lowering of pursuit maneuver timers;

• Suspects begin aggressive maneuvers against officers - e.g. ramming

• Assisting vehicle swaps/pickup

• Deadly force against officers - e.g. shooting at officer vehicles/officers directly

• EXTREME attempts at escape - Jumps (Rat Strats)

Keep in mind others perspectives when choosing to employ a higher number of units. 

For example if a suspect has “rammed” you however in the situation it was pretty clear there were other influences (bubble / pd mistake / genuine accident etc.) at play you should not employ these tactics and give them the benefit of the doubt.

Classification of Vehicles

The below table outlines the Maximum Vehicle limit applied for standard pursuits. This limit is only to be broken in extreme circumstances and when given total authorisation by commanding officer at a Sergeant ranking or higher.