JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – It’s not every day that a car chase happens in Jacksonville, but in the last week, there have been three different car chases in the area.
Two of the car chases resulted in traffic stalled for miles on Interstate 95 while one car chase that happened over the weekend cleared out a park filled with parents and their children.
According to former Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Director Tom Hackney, car chases have much stricter criteria so usually, it has to be a violent felony or erratic driving that causes an officer to pursue a suspect.
“The benefits of pursuing have to outweigh the danger to the public,” Hackney said.
The latest incident happened on Jacksonville’s northside on Monday afternoon after I-95 was shut down in both directions at Golfair Boulevard. According to the Florida Highway Patrol, the chase began when the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was pursuing a suspect.
“It should be some kind of violent felony, you know a kidnapping, a murderer, some kind of sexual battery suspect that the officer truly believes that person is a threat to the general public. Or there’s some kind of driving behavior before the pursuit started that led them to believe there’s a risk to the public,” Hackney said.
Officers did not state why the man was being chased but on Saturday a burglary suspect led St. Johns County deputies on a chase that ended at Davis Park, where multiple events with children and parents were happening nearby in Ponte Vedra Beach. Deputies fatally shot the man during the incident.
Hackney said other drivers on the road should stay out of the way when they see a chase happening on the roadway.
“You may see the suspect driving by you crazy fast then the next thing you know the officers in pursuit are there and it really happens so fast you don’t have a whole lot of time to react, so what we would really want is someone to drive predictably, Hackney said. “Don’t change lanes fast, stay in the lane where you are.”
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Last Tuesday, a carjacking suspect died after he crashed into semitruck trailer following a multicounty police chase that ended in Flagler County.
After reviewing the three recent chases, Hackney believes officers were justified in their pursuits.
“From looking at the ones that we’re talking about today, at least from the surface that their justification for starting those pursuits fit within the criteria that’s currently acceptable,” he said.
The suspect in Monday’s chase is in police custody. JSO has not provided any update on what led to the pursuit.
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