Police officers were at fault in 80 percent of collisions as they responded to emergencies with their sirens turned on during a six-month stretch last year, according to findings by a police independent watchdog.
During the first half 2014, actions by officers were the cause of 21 of 26 collisions involving Los Angeles police cars responding to “Code Three” emergencies, Inspector General Alexander Bustamante said in his report, which will be considered today by the Los Angeles Police Commission.
Code Three responses to emergencies refer to when police officers are driving with their car sirens and lights turned on.
The 26 Code Three collisions were out of 483 total crashes involving police officers during those six months, the report said, with Bustamante noting that collisions are the second costliest source of liability for the department.
The top reason the officers were driving in Code Three mode prior to crashing was to offer backup, amounting to 14 of the collisions.
Another five of the Code Three crashes occurred during car chases, four were while they were responding to a “citizen-related call,” and one was when the officer was on the way to a traffic collision incident.
Investigators found eight of the 26 Code Three crashes to be the result of “unsafe speed,” out of which, six occurred while the officers were trying to make turns too quickly, the report said.
The OIG also wrote that he believes a ninth crash also occurred due to unsafe speed, disputing the investigator’s finding that the cause was “other than driver.”
This crash involved officers chasing a stolen car and driving into a tree stump, which the OIG said was due to “improper driver, unsafe speeds” and resulted in the officers being hospitalized and the car sustaining “major damage.”
Three other crashes happened because officers drove their cars forward or backwards unsafely. Two of the collisions occurred when patrol cars responding to the same emergency crashed into each other.
A third incident involved another car backing into the patrol vehicle, but police supervisors considered this the fault of the officer because the police car was also moving forward at the time.
Out of seven crashes that happened at an intersection, five were not caused by police officers, and were instead caused by civilian drivers who did not yield to officers as they drove through with their sirens blaring and lights flashing. The remaining two crashes were considered the officers’ fault because they were going against red lights.
Bustamante wrote that many of the investigations into the collisions lacked information about the speed at which the drivers were going, and current policy only asks officers to report the speed if they know it. He recommended that the officers and investigators be required to include information about the speed the police cars were going at before they crashed.
The report also found that at least 14 of the 49 officers involved in the 26 crashes were not wearing seatbelts, and it was unclear whether another nine officers were wearing seatbelts or not because the police reports contained inconsistent or inaccurate information.
More than three-quarters of the 20 officers who mentioned they did not use seatbelts said they chose not to wear them due to “tactical reasons.”
