Cleveland Heights police investigating department’s pursuit prior to deadly wrong-way crash

CLEVELAND, Ohio - Cleveland Heights police are investigating whether officers chasing a suspect who crashed and killed a man on Interstate 90[1] violated the department's pursuit policy.

The crash happened Dec.

6 as authorities sped after a suspected carjacker driving a stolen Amazon delivery van the wrong way on the highway. Dr. Curtis Birchall, 70, of Akron died.

Cleveland Heights officials are seeking to determine whether the circumstances of the chase dictated that officers drive the wrong way on the highway in pursuit of the driver, Jalen Jackson.

The department's policy, as a guideline, suggests officers avoid it. On social media, critics have said the officers appeared reckless.

Cleveland Heights police declined to say whether officers broke the pursuit policy, which was updated in September. The incident is under investigation, the city's police chief, Chris Britton, said in a statement.

"It would be easy to read our pursuit policy, watch the Ohio Department of Transportation video and jump to a conclusion about this pursuit because we know it ended in tragedy," Britton said. "But we can't rush to judgment.

We have to evaluate the decisions that were made based on the totality of the circumstances and what the officers knew at the time, not on the pursuit's eventual outcome."

Jackson, 23, of Cleveland, is charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and aggravated robbery. Authorities say he carried out the carjacking of a 55-year-old Amazon driver. The robbery happened about 7:15 p.m. on Summit Park Road as the driver delivered packages.

Jackson then led Cleveland Heights police on a chase across Cleveland and through West Side neighborhoods, with speeds hitting 100 mph, police said.

Officers suspected that Jackson fired at them during the pursuit.

Three Cleveland Heights officers eventually followed Jackson onto I-90 driving west in the eastbound lanes before Jackson collided into Birchall.

The city's pursuit policy says chases expose innocent residents, law enforcement officers and fleeing violators to the risk of serious injury or death.

The policy says that as a general rule, officers should not drive the wrong way on the road when pursuing a suspect. Instead, they should drive parallel to the fleeing car in the correct lane of traffic and monitor the offender's driving.

Sarah Gelsomino, a civil rights attorney who has filed lawsuits against police, said the pursuit was not safe because of how long it went on, its speed and the location of it.

"So, then the question is, how necessary was it?" she said. "It does seem like the potential risks to innocent bystanders here were really, really high and potentially outweighed the risk to the community of terminating the pursuit and trying to find this guy in another way."

At one point, Jackson led police through Cleveland's Ohio City, driving southbound on West 25th Street and reaching speeds of about 74 mph, according to the body-camera video worn by an officer in the chase. Dispatchers alerted the officers to be aware of pedestrian traffic while driving through neighborhoods.

Gelsomino questioned whether the officers were focused on apprehending Jackson "as opposed to engaging in a safe and necessary pursuit."

"Like it says on the body cam, they wanted to prove that you can't get away from Cleveland Heights police," she said, referring to a statement that an officer yelled after the accident.

At one point, a Cleveland Heights police lieutenant terminated the pursuit because Jackson was driving nearly 113 mph on I-90 westbound from Eddy Road toward Cleveland without headlights, according to a police report.

The pursuit was ordered to continue after the officer leading the chase informed the lieutenant that Jackson was slowing down.

"At this time, due to the severity of the crimes committed by the driver of the vehicle, the immediate deadly threat the driver posed to society and to alert oncoming drivers with our visible overhead lights and audible sirens, officers continued the pursuit," the officer wrote in an investigative report.

Jackson eventually exited the highway before reentering and driving the wrong way.

Officers continued to pursue Jackson going westbound in the eastbound lanes approaching the Fulton Road overpass when he swerved into oncoming traffic and caused a head-on collision, according to the police report.

The officers involved with the pursuit were initially placed on leave, but they are back on duty, a city spokesperson said.

Gelsomino questioned how Cleveland Heights police could handle the investigation of the pursuit.

"When police police themselves, their own department is looking at their own fellow officers' behavior," she said. "That just doesn't lend itself toward any kind of independent evaluation of what happened.

And that's a problem.

It's always better to have an outside agency looking over the actions to determine whether there were any violations."

It is unclear when the department will finish its investigation.

"I know first-hand how unpredictable vehicle pursuits can be," said Britton, the city's police chief. "You have to make difficult, snap decisions based on limited information, knowing that even if you follow policy to the letter and exercise your best judgment, things can still go terribly wrong."

References

1. ^ crashed and killed a man on Interstate 90 (www.cleveland.com)