Oakland Police No Longer Need Supervisors’ Permission for High-Speed Chases

Oakland’s Police Commission is loosening restrictions on vehicle pursuits, granting officers more leeway to chase suspects at high speeds despite safety concerns from residents.

The citizen-led commission voted unanimously Thursday evening to remove a special order that required Oakland Police Department officers to gain special permission to continue chases once speeds reach 50 mph.

According to the policy, officers must notify a supervising officer immediately after beginning a chase and seek permission to continue. All chases remain limited to situations in which officers have a “reasonable suspicion” that a violent crime has occurred or a suspect has a firearm.

The change comes after strong pressure from Police Chief Floyd Mitchell, who has been advocating for months to lift the restrictions put in place in 2022 after a series of deaths related to high-speed chases.

Mitchell said the special order has hampered his department’s ability to prevent crime, citing a nearly 50% increase in 2023 in the number of suspects fleeing by car without being chased, and an even further increase in 2024.

Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom echoed Mitchell’s concerns, telling then-Mayor Sheng Thao, the City Council and the Police Commission in a letter that Oakland’s pursuit restrictions allowed criminals to flee “with impunity.” He urged the city to remove its special order, which was more restrictive than most California jurisdictions’ chase policies.

According to Newsom, California Highway Patrol officers he sent to Oakland that spring to counter rising crime, sideshows and carjackings had reported that criminals were avoiding arrest by fleeing via specific routes where they knew OPD would discontinue pursuits.

Newsom said that while he understood the policy aimed to protect bystanders during a pursuit, “there is also extreme danger to the public in allowing criminals to act with impunity, and the reckless driving associated with sideshows and other criminal acts is a significant threat to public safety.”

In May, Mitchell submitted a request to rescind the special order and change some language in the city’s pursuit policy. In August, he amended the request, tightening some of the changed language specifying when an officer must report that they have begun a high-speed pursuit based on feedback from the city attorney’s office, Police Commission and others.

Despite the revisions, many speakers at Thursday’s commission meeting urged the body not to loosen chase rules, saying it could increase the number of police chase-related deaths.

“The current policy is restrictive, as it should be,” one man said during public comment, pointing to research conducted by the San Francisco Chronicle that found more than 25% of those killed in pursuits across the U.S. were bystanders.

“This doesn’t call in more justice; if anything it may lead to more grief,” he continued.

The man said he had previously worked with Marvin Boomer, a veteran Oakland teacher who was struck and killed by a driver fleeing a police chase just days after Mitchell’s request in May.

Boomer and his girlfriend were hit while walking along a sidewalk in the Clinton-San Antonio neighborhood on May 28, after CHP officers chased 18-year-old Eric Scott Hernandez-Garcia, who was driving a vehicle they said was associated with a “felony evading incident.”

The CHP officers, who aren’t bound by Oakland’s stricter regulations, first initiated and discontinued a short chase, then picked it back up at a second location after Hernandez-Garcia briefly exited the car.

Seconds into the second chase, Hernandez-Garcia hit a minivan, causing minor injuries to its passengers, and the CHP again called off their pursuit. He continued to drive east, where he smashed into a fire hydrant and hit the couple on East 21st Street and 12th Avenue. Boomer was pronounced dead at the scene, and his girlfriend was taken to a hospital for treatment.

At the time, Cat Brooks, co-founder and executive director of the Anti-Police Terror Project, cautioned against loosening the OPD policy.

“Police high-speed chases kill more people every year than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and lightning combined,” she said. “They do not prevent crime. They do not solve crime.”