In 2025, concerns have continued to grow about Milwaukee Police’s pursuit policy. The MPD policy allows police to pursue vehicles for a number of reasons, including chasing reckless drivers.
This year, there have been an average of three pursuits a day in the city, and those chases have resulted in nine fatalities. Six of those were bystanders.
On Dec. 18, Josh Parker from New York University’s Policing Project spoke to Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission about how Milwaukee’s pursuit policy stacks up nationally. WUWM’s Jimmy Gutierrez followed up with Parker to talk about those findings.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity
Jimmy Gutierrez: In 2017, there were a lot of calls from the public and our Common Council for police to do something to address reckless driving. There were multiple hit-and-run injuries and deaths and a record number of non-pursuits from Milwaukee’s police department. There was a no-chase policy in place a few years before that. What should we know about that approach?
Josh Parker: So my understanding with the history of Milwaukee's pursuit policy is that at one point, under Chief [Ed] Flynn, there was a total ban on police pursuits. And that's not the approach I would suggest, or best practices would suggest with the current available technology and pursuit alternatives that we have.
If there's a total ban on pursuits, that means every member of the public knows they don't need to stop for a police car. But what we see is when there are restrictive pursuit policies, for example, pursuits only for violent crimes and in limited cases, reckless driving and DUI, that tends to not lead to a major uptick in the folks who are fleeing from police when you look at the national data.
Your research gets into the extraordinary costs of police chases, both in dollars to taxpayers and then in lives as well, so what did you find? And also, who do they impact at a wider disparity?
So let's first talk about injuries and fatalities from pursuits. The San Francisco Chronicle this past year did a comprehensive national study on pursuits to see how many people across the country were injured and killed from pursuits in a recent five-year period.
And what they found is that from 2017 to 2020, over 3,300 pursuit fatalities resulted, and 550 of those killed were mere bystanders — folks who were just driving in their car, not the ones stopped, or maybe folks who were walking on the sidewalk. And they also cited federal government estimates that…over 80% of deaths from these pursuits were for traffic infractions, nonviolent crimes, or no crime at all.
In terms of the financial cost, pursuits are really, really costly to taxpayers. From 2017 to 2022, local governments and insurers paid more than $80 million in pursuit-related settlements and judgments. And Milwaukee has paid out several of those judgments.
And then lastly, there are huge racial disparities when it comes to who is pursued by the police and for what. Black people are four times more likely to be killed in police chases than white people, that's according to the San Francisco Chronicle study. And according to USA Today, Black drivers are more than twice as likely as white drivers to be pursued for minor violations or nonviolent offenses like having a single broken tail light, a recently expired registration, or playing loud music.
We heard a lot of public comments from people that had some very harrowing stories, some tragic stories. I'm curious what stood out to you as far as hearing from folks from Milwaukee and then hearing also from the [Fire and Police] Commissioners in Milwaukee?
Harrowing is exactly the right word. It's devastating to hear about folks who have lost loved ones in vehicle pursuits, especially if they're a bystander — so they weren't even committing a violation. But the fact is, even if someone is fleeing from a traffic stop like having a broken tail light, or maybe they're going over the speed limit and they're chased, they or passengers in the vehicles are killed, that is needlessly tragic. Those deaths need not happen.
So what really stood out to me from the public testimony was how much pain so many members of the public and community members are in because of the tragedies caused by police pursuits in which their loved ones have been injured or killed. And the fact is, given that many police pursued alternatives, that I discussed in my presentation, the vast majority of these pursuits are not necessary and shouldn't be occurring at all.
What also sticks out to me is how Milwaukee does not compare favorably in terms of comparing their policy with best practices for vehicle pursuits policies. And this is reflected in a comprehensive recent report on pursuits by the Police Executive Research Forum and federal Department of Justice. Also, several major police departments across the country, are to only allow pursuits for when someone in the vehicle is suspected of a violent crime, or only in rare cases, for reckless driving or impaired driving. And when I learned from the Milwaukee-specific data and people's accounts, is that the vast majority of cases in Milwaukee are for reckless driving. That should not be the case.
