The Oakland Police Commission voted unanimously to change the city’s police pursuit policy to allow high-speed chases on city streets under certain conditions.
The policy still only allows chases for violent crimes and crimes involving the use or possession of guns, but does away with a rule that required officers to ask for permission before continuing a pursuit that reached 50 mph.
“At its core, it’s balancing out the debate of safety in the community and the dangers, the inherent dangers, of pursuits against the need to apprehend potential criminals in the streets and to change the narrative that we see commonly on the streets that folks could take off above 50 miles an hour and not get chased, essentially leading to some of the misrepresentation of this policy as a no-chase policy,” said Police Commission chair Ricardo Garcia-Acosta.
The new policy says officers have to ask a supervisor for verbal approval to continue a chase once they’ve initiated it, but it doesn’t specify at what point during the pursuit they have to ask. It also reinstates a policy that forbids officers from being criticized or disciplined for calling off a chase.
“Officers will no longer need to seek explicit permission to exceed 50 miles an hour, however, instead adhering to existing speed risk factors,” said Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell.
19 risk factors
There are currently 19 risk factors that officers and supervisors need to think about when deciding to initiate or continue a chase.
Some of those factors include traffic conditions, the location of the pursuit, the safety of the public and pursuing officers, the speed of the chase, the officer’s and supervisor’s familiarity with the area of the pursuit and road and weather conditions, among other things.
Mitchell said he didn’t know if the policy changes will lead to more and faster police chases around town, but did note that between 2022 and 2023, there was a 73% reduction in the number of pursuits because of the 50 mph rule and other factors.
He also said that most chases last 90 seconds or less and very few last longer than five minutes.
Still, Commissioner Wilson Riles noted that the average speed of police pursuits in Oakland has been faster than 50 mph over the past few years, meaning that officers were asking for and getting permission for higher-speed chases even as the number of chases declined.
During the hearing, several members of the public urged commissioners not to change the policy in light of the death of high school teacher Marvin Boomer Jr.
Boomer was killed and his girlfriend was injured by a suspected car thief who was being chased by California Highway Patrol officers on East Oakland streets on May 28.
Mitchell said that the Oakland City Council initiated the policy change when it voted to approve a resolution from councilmembers Kevin Jenkins and Treva Reid in 2024 directing the Police Commission to review and propose changes to the city’s pursuit policy.
During that process, Mitchell said he and the commission worked with several stakeholders, including the public, the city attorney’s office, the Oakland Police Officers’ Association and the federal monitor appointed to oversee reforms within the Police Department, among others.
He said things really picked up momentum after Gov. Gavin Newsom held a news conference in Oakland and “empathetically requested that the Oakland Police Commission consider making substantive changes to the Oakland Police Department’s pursuit policy.”