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Some agencies instruct officers to use a patrol vehicle as a shield, parking the squad car beside the road and deploying the spike strips from a distance ahead of the front bumper. The first rule of thumb on “how” to deploy tire deflation devices is to create a wide “buffer zone” between the roadway on which the strips are thrown and the officer deploying them. This unnecessary danger of injury or worse can be avoided with just a few thoughts on how-and when-to use tire deflation devices. Officers are issued “spike strips” with just the scantest guidance on how to safely use them.Īnd most of that training takes place in a department parking lot with skilled drivers who have no ill-will or violent intent-in fact, those trainers have the officer’s safety at the top of their mind. The problem is-as is all too common in most skills of the law enforcement universe-there is not an abundance of training with these devices. In a typical case, an officer attempts to manually apply the tire deflation device across the road in such a way that it impacts the suspect vehicle, and then quickly attempts to clear the roadway before the pursuing patrol cars cross the area. The deployment of tire deflation devices is not something an officer does with great frequency, and it is clear from some of the videos one can find online that officers doing this are simply improvising.
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It has been reported that as many as 30 people have been killed in the two decades since “spike strips” were introduced into police inventory, with some officers intentionally run over by drivers trying to evade the tire deflation devices by leaving the road and driving along the shoulder where the officers were trying to stay safe. The question becomes, “Is ending a vehicle pursuit worth risking the end of a law enforcement officer’s career or even their life?”Īltogether too many officers have been badly injured or killed deploying “spike strips.” Many of those injuries or deaths occurred while the officers were deploying tire deflation devices on an interstate freeway or rural roadway where speeds could reach more than 100 miles per hour. Spokesmen for the Minneapolis Police Department, Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and the National Guard said their personnel were not the ones shown damaging tires in the videos and photos that are making the rounds on social media.Every year it seems, officers are injured or killed while attempting to deploy tire deflation devices in an effort to end a high-speed pursuit. “It was every single car that was in the parking lot,” said Kimmel, who has covered more than 100 protests in the past several years and added, “I’ve never seen the tire slashing before, particularly in a parking lot.” His video of the damage on Twitter has been viewed more than 1.25 million times as of Monday afternoon. Los Angeles documentary and television producer Andrew Kimmel said his tires were similarly slashed while parked in the Kmart lot. “As far as I could see, it looked like all their tires had been slashed,” Serres said. and saw his car was among a few dozen with flattened tires. Kyla Cook was with Ebertz and said “all of us were in shock” when she and others in the Kmart lot saw one member from a line of officers in riot gear knife the tires of an unattended pickup truck.Īmong the vehicle owners whose tires were damaged was Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Chris Serres, who was covering the protests the night of May 30 and returned to the Kmart lot about 1 a.m. She added these were the same officers who “were tear-gassing and shooting us with rubber bullets to try to push us farther back into the Kmart parking lot.” Gordon said the patrol also targeted vehicles “that contained items used to cause harm during violent protests” such as rocks, concrete and sticks. “State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires … in order to stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement,” Gordon said. Department of Public Safety spokesman Bruce Gordon confirmed that tires were cut in “a few locations.” Images from South Washington Avenue at Interstate 35W also showed officers with knives deflating the tires of two unoccupied cars with repeated jabs on May 31. Video and photo images posted on the news outlet Mother Jones show officers in military-style uniforms puncturing tires in the Kmart parking lot at Lake Street and Nicollet Avenue on May 30. MINNEAPOLIS - Two law enforcement agencies acknowledged Monday that officers patrolling Minneapolis during the height of recent protests knifed the tires of numerous vehicles parked and unoccupied in at least two locations in the midst of the unrest.