Oklahoma ranks eighth highest in the U.S. for pursuit-related deaths from 2016 to 2022, according to a Tulsa World and Lee Enterprises’ Public Service Journalism Team analysis of federal data.
But the state doesn’t track car chases or pursuit-related crashes.
So the Tulsa World and Lee spent months piecing together a database of Oklahoma’s deadly pursuits for that seven-year period through various federal, state and local public records sources.
The goal? To learn who was being killed, which agencies were pursuing and why.
Here are five key takeaways from our exclusive and in-depth four-part series.
Who is killed in Oklahoma police car chases? 1 in 4 deaths are innocent motorists.
About one out of every four people killed in Oklahoma law enforcement car chases were innocent people not involved in the pursuits. Or 18 of the 79 deaths (23%).
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About two out of every five of the pursuit deaths weren’t even the drivers trying to elude law enforcement. Or at least 33 of the deaths (42%).
They were innocent motorists or passengers who were riding inside of fleeing vehicles.
“The number of deaths that occur in Oklahoma pursuits is troubling,” said retired longtime Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel, who advocates for pursuit policies and training to adequately reflect care and safety for the public and officers.
Deaths stem from traffic infractions or property crimes as ‘police are becoming the judges’
The vast majority of 68 fatal chases that killed 79 people were prompted by traffic violations or property crimes.
Those reasons aren’t considered worth pursuing by many leading experts — and certainly not worth the loss of human life.
Additionally, even when fleeing drivers were captured alive, the World and Lee found they weren’t convicted of violent offenses aside from crimes tied to the chases.
“Police are becoming the judges,” said Angelo Brown, an Arkansas State University criminology researcher and professor. “(Eluding drivers) should have due process — give them a trial.”
Learn more in the first part of the series:
Oklahoma police chase deaths surged. One agency curbed pursuits; another erased policies.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol’s 16 deadly chases and Oklahoma City Police Department’s 12 fatal pursuits each were much more than any other agency.
Oklahoma City Police responded by imposing stronger restrictions on car chases. Conversely, the Highway Patrol reacted by gutting 80% of its pursuit policy.
Oklahoma City policy encourages officers to try to avoid vehicle pursuits because of their “extreme danger.” It also reminds officers that “their basic responsibility is to protect the public.”
The Highway Patrol deleted all policy language that governed troopers who engage in car chases. It also erased wording that had required troopers to “promote the safety of all persons” during pursuits.
Learn more in the second part of the series:
Man in crisis said he wanted to ‘die by cop’ in high-speed chase. Oklahoma police obliged.
JR Williams’ death amid a mental health crisis demonstrates how car chases can be unnecessary, not worth the risk, and create more public danger than safety.
Law enforcement mishandled Williams by reverting to a ‘you run, we chase’ mentality rather than exercising patience to develop a safety plan, according to Mike Brose, who was CEO of Mental Health Association of Oklahoma for nearly three decades.
Williams’ death also spotlights a pursuit loophole in Oklahoma’s uniform traffic collision report form.
The state has no data element to track car chases to analyze the cause and scope of what Whetsel — the longtime retired Oklahoma County sheriff — described as “the pursuit problem in this country.”
Learn more in the third part of the series:
Oklahoma crash reports no longer track when officers intentionally hit fleeing vehicles
The Department of Public Safety is shutting down its data collection of police intentionally hitting fleeing drivers in chases.
DPS oversees the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, which performs “legal interventions” more than three times as much as all other agencies combined.
Legal interventions are more commonly known as a pursuit intervention technique (PIT) or tactical vehicle intervention (TVI). The concept is for an officer to forcibly spin out an eluding driver to hopefully end the chase.
The maneuver is one of many chase practices that the U.S. Department of Justice and Police Executive Research Forum are encouraging police to rethink, which is difficult to examine across Oklahoma without uniform documentation.
Learn more in the fourth part of the series:
Why the Tulsa World reported this series on fatal high-speed pursuits
Oklahoma ranks among the top 10 in the nation for rate of pursuit-related deaths.
Largely, that rate has been driven by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, a fact spotlighted in more than 80 stories since 2016 by Corey Jones, a member of the Tulsa World newsroom and Lee Enterprises’ Public Service Journalism team.
In this new four-part series, Jones built a database to identify pursuit deaths among all agencies in Oklahoma in a seven-year span — not just the Highway Patrol — and reveal how many people killed were innocent motorists or unfortunate enough to be passengers next to fleeing drivers.
The Department of Public Safety, which oversees OHP, has often refused to answer questions about the issue for eight years. DPS Commissioner Tim Tipton hasn’t offered a response to questions, while his three preceding commissioners in varying degrees have spoken to the Tulsa World about OHP’s fatal pursuits. Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Tipton to his position three years ago in September 2021.
The Tulsa World’s spotlight originally focused solely on OHP in 2016 after three of its chases killed four people in five months, including a retired Tulsa Public Schools teacher and grandmother driving herself to church in Owasso. The agency refused to release even a redacted version of its pursuit policy and provided scant records in each case.
The agency’s pushback escalated in 2018. An OHP attorney had a district court judge remove Jones from an open court hearing in which a trooper would testify about the pursuit policy in the felony murder case of Lt. Heath Meyer. Meyer died in 2017 after being struck by one of his two colleagues who collided at an OHP roadblock in Moore while chasing D’angelo Burgess for traffic infractions.
In 2021 and 2022, the Tulsa World and Lee — in series that won first place for investigative journalism in the Great Plains Journalism Awards against news organizations in seven states — examined OHP. The World and Lee uncovered reckless trooper actions and false or misleading statements, shoddy record-keeping, failure to address “alarming” concerns expressed by commanders, and unwillingness to formally review several fatal chases despite red flags.
The Tulsa World had filed litigation against DPS in October 2020 after the agency repeatedly over a year changed its reasons for denying requests for force records in a string of OHP deadly pursuits and shootings. The case was dropped four months later after DPS agreed to hand over the records, paving the way for the 2021 and 2022 investigative series.
Throughout these stories by Jones, leading contemporary policing experts characterize the vast majority of these chases as unnecessary or not worth the risk.
How the database on police chases was built
To build its database, the Tulsa World and Lee tapped the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), which has a filter to sort for “pursuit-related” fatal wrecks but relatively few details about them.
The World and Lee then used that basic information to request traffic collision reports, law enforcement records and court documents from state and local agencies. The investigation also analyzed raw collision report data and autopsy records.
The World and Lee were able to determine what prompted 65 of 68 deadly Oklahoma law enforcement chases via public records.
The investigation relied upon a handful of media reports to fill in where agencies had poor or no documentation or where public officials didn’t respond to or weren’t cooperative with open records requests.
Ultimately, which agency or agencies pursued in one of the 68 deadly chases couldn’t be determined.
Seven fatal pursuit wrecks aren’t in FARS data because they were “legal interventions” — officers spinning out or hitting fleeing drivers — or determined to be deliberate crashes. FARS is meant to capture unintentional wrecks.
The World and Lee focused on the 2016-2022 time frame because the newspaper began tracking and investigating Oklahoma Highway Patrol vehicle pursuits in 2016. The latest federal data available for this article was from 2022.
The newspaper investigation of OHP has uncovered reckless trooper actions and false or misleading statements, shoddy record-keeping, failure to address “alarming” concerns expressed by commanders and unwillingness to formally review several fatal chases despite red flags.
