The darkness of the night is illuminated by the headlights of the British police car. The young man on the scooter is running away on a secondary road. The car of the agents first chases him and then spur the two -wheeled vehicle. The driver flies bouncing on the hood and lands on the asphalt slipping for a few meters together with the scooter. The scene, which led to his arrest, was shot by the police camera. Panorama publish on its website Panorama.it A sequence of such videos, which shows how some law enforcement officers of our continent (starting with the English ones just mentioned), not to mention agents in the United States, use aggressive methods to block suspicions of vehicles on two wheels And who does not stop at the ALT.
In London there is an authentic spinning tactic, In France there is a bill to adopt English systems, in the countries of northern Europe you do not go to the subtle with those who flee a scooter and in the United States, aggressive maneuvers are used to throw cars off the road. «In reality many countries have worse restrictions of ours: the French agents have the ban on making the vehicle on the run go off the road. In Greece, the pursuit also starts for violations of the traffic code, but any contact is prohibited. In North Macedonia a vehicle can be stopped by force only for serious crimes such as terrorism and murder. Use a special device called Stinger (a kind of nailed band, ed) to pierce the tires »explains Massimo Denarier. Delegate of the Autonomous Police Union (SAP) for the Aosta Valley, he is the general secretary of the CESP (European Council of Police Unions), which represents more than 200 thousand agents of 17 States.
The carabinieri are in the sight for the case of the 19 -year -old Egyptian Ramy Elgaml, He died on November 24 after eight kilometers of chase of the weapon, because he had not stopped at ALT. «The directives have always indicated that we must chase those who flee, but with great attention to avoid accidents. But a specific protocol is missing »explains Claudio Samorè, lieutenant on leave with 35 years of service behind them. A mixture of antagonists, anarchists, young immigrants and pro Palestinians take to the streets with banners asking for “revenge” for Ramy and not justice as the father invokes. In the two -wheeled escape, the most determined police are the English one with the “tactical and tpac containment chase”, which provides for real ramming. In 2023 twenty thousand crimes were made using two -wheeled vehicles, but since this aggressive tactic has been adopted, escapes and crimes have decreased by 36 percent.
The videos shot by the police show who did not stop at the ALT and is touched in the corner ending up off the road. Or the suspicions invested in full by the police car that arrives in the opposite direction. Delinquents do not only use mopeds with the passenger behind armed with a hammer for violence and snatch, but also electric bicycles launched at full speed, especially for the theft on the fly of mobile phones. In 2022 they were stolen in England 136,520 cell phones for a value of 56 million euros. On December 24th, the agent on duty in London, Jordan Smith, saved a mother with the child in his arms from the impact with Sonny Stringer, specialist in the snap of mobile phones, fleeing with an electric bike, who can touch the 100 kilometers the hour. Smith spurd him behind the wheel of the police car. In the fall the thief fractures his knee and will be sentenced to two years in prison. In France, citizenship is exasperated by the so -called “urban rodei”. Most of young immigrants who take the roads for a motocross track. In September last year, a 19 -year -old decided to give up while a girl crossed on the stripes in Vallauris, in the maritime Alps. Kamilya, seven years old, hit in full, dies from the wounds. In 2021 an average of four convictions per day were issued for the “urban rodei”. Last year the police carried out thirty thousand interventions.
The center -right republicans presented a bill that in article 4 requests the adoption of the “tactical contact” like the British. The police could make more chases, but the French police spokesman, Sonia Fileuil, admits on the Actu.fr information site, which “is not advisable”. The reason is simple: “To avoid damage to the driver, the police, but also to other road users”. A couple of video chases of suspicions on two wheels in Norway and Sweden have become viral. In December, the Norwegian police dart by sirens explained behind two people dressed in black on a scooter. At high speed they slip into the streets of a park and then exceed a bridge hoping that it will be close enough to stop the agents, but the policemen will pass on. Shortly thereafter they squash the scooter and stop the two. Another scene shot with the mobile phone from a passerby shows a white, yellow and blue vehicle of the Swedish police who spur a scooter in a limited traffic area by flying it by a few meters. The driver who finished on the ground gets up to continue the escape, but the policeman who got out of the car jumps on him by landing him again. “Everyone’s security must always be safeguarded, including members of the police and above all citizens, for which we operate” underlines Denarier. «In a chase it means making a lot of attention to passers -by or people behind the wheel who have nothing to do with it. For tactics like the English or American one there is also a problem of costs and training ».
The hardest are the policemen in the United States, which however concentrate on motorists rather than on the ramming of motorcycles. The Pursuit Intervention Technique, known as the Pit maneuver, is adopted by the American law enforcement agencies to end a chase. In practice, the police vehicle joins what flees in such a way that the front wheels are aligned with the rear. Then the agent is brusfully storing the “target” on the side to rotate it on himself. The vehicle usually ends up on the guardrail or off the road. At high speeds, the maneuver can cause the vehicle to overturn. An investigation by the newspaper San francisco chronicle It reveals that in the last seven years 87 people have died from the disadvantage of the vehicle who had not stopped at ALT. In several cases the speed was too high to safely perform the maneuver and 37 victims, including seven children, were passengers or pedestrians. The vast majority of pit maneuvers does not kill anyone and blocks the car flee with a controlled tail head allowing to capture dangerous murders such as Carl Roy Webb Boards II, who had killed a police officer during traffic control. «After the Ramy case let’s not forget that the policeman or the carabiniere sometimes dies. A protocol for chases does not exist, but there are general rules “points out the SAP exponent. «One of the former is to safeguard the safety of the chasing and also of the pursuers. The fundamental aspect is that the citizen understands a concept: who wears a uniform is not his enemy ».