Memphis Police cannot pursue someone they see driving recklessly or drag racing because the MPD, like many other police departments across the country, limits when officers can chase suspects by car.

The result is that police get license plate numbers and other information that allows them to track down a suspect later and make an arrest for evading police, which is a felony, along with reckless driving or drag racing, which are misdemeanors.

The felony charge may stick, but it and the misdemeanor traffic charges become more difficult to prove after the fact. The misdemeanor may be dropped to get a guilty plea to the felony.

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All of which makes it difficult, at least for now, to track what is working and what isn’t when it comes to high-speed driving and racing on city streets and the interstate.

One member of the Memphis City Council is calling for changes in the police pursuit policy.

“I promise you as we are discovering policies and figuring out the holes and gaps in them, the individuals out there who are committing these crimes know them like the back of their hand.”

— Memphis City Councilman Worth Morgan

“They know MPD policies and procedures. They know the law. They know what they can get away with and they are sharing it amongst each other,” Morgan said. “The secret is out and I think we are a little late to the realization that our policies and procedures are not enough and are not getting the job done.”

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No other council members have joined the call, at least for now. And all the data isn’t in — namely, felony evading-police convictions that District Attorney General Amy Weirich is to provide to the council after her appearance in the Jan. 18 committee sessions.

Weirich didn’t offer an opinion on whether pursuit policies should be changed.

“I think law enforcement is doing the best they can, given their own internal policies and procedures as it relates to pursuit and also given what the law allows and what the law doesn’t allow,” she said. “For the 30 years I’ve been a prosecutor, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a DUI charge without a reckless driving charge attached to that.”

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland says there are good reasons for the current pursuit policy.

“We don’t do high-speed chases and other police departments don’t do high-speed chases. … unless it’s a dangerous felon, and that’s a different story,” Strickland said in November 2021 on the WKNO Channel 10 program, “Behind The Headlines.”

“But if it’s just someone speeding, you chase them — there is some chance they are going to lose control and hurt someone,” he said, noting that driving at high speeds is something police are trained to do. “The more likely thing is an untrained driver — often younger people — will lose control.”

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Strickland also said in addition to helicopter pursuits, which are specifically mentioned as an alternative to police car chases in the department’s pursuit policy, the city recently succeeded in changing a state law that had barred law enforcement from using interstate cameras to track those fleeing police.

“We have thousands of cameras out right now,” Strickland said.

The current MPD pursuit policy forbids police pursuits for misdemeanor offenses.

The policy reads that car chases are “specifically prohibited” for several reasons, including “when the officer knows that the suspect is wanted only for a traffic violation, a misdemeanor or a nonviolent felony.”

It also provides for the use of helicopters in a pursuit as the “primary vehicle when circumstances do not warrant continuation of a pursuit due to the pursuit reaching unacceptable levels.”

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Uniform Patrol Deputy Chief Paul Wright, one of two deputy chiefs over uniform patrol, says the city’s reckless driving task forces, formed with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, are a success with the current pursuit policy in place.

“If you are caught out there speeding and trying to evade police, you will be arrested and your car will be towed,” he told City Council members at a Jan. 4 committee session.

“I don’t want someone to think that because you get away you are not being looked for — because you are.”

— Uniform Patrol Deputy Chief Paul Wright

Two weeks later, the council learned that the police arrests or tickets for drag racing and reckless driving charges rarely stick.

Memphis police investigating drag racing on I-240

Weirich cited statistics showing in 2021, a total of 636 reckless driving case were dismissed or “nolle prossed,” making up the vast majority of the 780 reckless driving cases resolved that year.

The total includes 115 convictions.

But the number doesn’t include cases where someone might have pleaded guilty to other charges, leading to the dismissal of the reckless driving misdemeanor.

Of 33 drag racing charges disposed of last year in Shelby County courts, 23 were nolle prossed while four were resolved with convictions.

Drag racing and reckless driving are misdemeanors under Tennessee law — even with the recent upgrading of drag racing to a higher-level misdemeanor last year and the ability to seize cars upon conviction.

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Weirich noted that other seizure or forfeiture state statutes allow authorities to seize property involved in the case upon arrest.

And she acknowledged Morgan’s point about the difficulty in proving who was behind the wheel after the fact.

“We have to be able to prove identity and we have to prove that individual before we get started on any prosecution,” Weirich said. “And then we have to be able to prove the elements of the crime they are charged with.”

In some cases, the car in question may have fake drive-out tags. The use of fake tags has noticeably increased during the pandemic and has even become a flourishing black market business online.

One of the first things Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis commented on when she came to the city six months ago was the number of cars with bogus drive-out tags.

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Wright didn’t have figures on how many felony evading-arrest charges were filed or how many charges were filed as a result of police pursuits this month.

Morgan’s concern is one that shows up in decades of debate about police pursuit policies that predate the “stunt driving” featured in the “Fast and Furious” series of movies, which are a prominent factor in the culture.

To what extent is a pursuit policy in writing and available for the public to view?

And are videos made by locals and often shared on social media, which show motorists driving recklessly but officers not giving chase, encouraging other drivers to do the same? 

Both questions were contemplated by lawmakers in numerous states and judges starting in the mid-1980s when general policies became more specific and liability in lawsuits became part of the calculation.