Dozens of Minnesotans have been killed in high speed police chases since 2017

At least 54 Minnesotans were killed in police chases between 2017 and 2022, according to a first-of-its kind national database compiled by the San Francisco Chronicle. 

About half of those killed were either innocent bystanders or passengers in the vehicles pursued. The overwhelming majority of those pursuits stemmed from traffic stops, car thefts and other nonviolent offenses. Less than one quarter of the deadly police chases were initiated over a suspected violent crime.

This finding is consistent with broader data about Minnesota police pursuits: Police initiated roughly 2,800 pursuits in 2022. Half were for traffic violations, and only 166 — about 6% — involved a suspected felony, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

Lethal police chases are a largely unstudied and undercounted phenomenon, the Chronicle found in its investigation. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which maintains a comprehensive database of other types of traffic deaths in the U.S., deliberately excludes certain types of police chase deaths from its data and misses many more due to reporting lapses.

All told, at least 3,336 Americans were killed in police pursuits from 2017 through 2021, and tens of thousands more were injured. The national trends mirror Minnesota’s, in that most chases stem from relatively minor crimes, and a large proportion of those killed are either innocent bystanders or passengers in the cars driven by criminal suspects.

“These are completely avoidable deaths,” a former deputy chief in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice told the Chronicle. “Police are killing too many people in pursuits for reasons that are entirely unnecessary and it’s ruining lives.”

The Minnesota DPS data also underscores the incompleteness of official records of police pursuits. The 2021 report, for instance, lists just two “incapacitating injuries” associated with police chases that year and no fatalities. In reality, according to the Chronicle’s data, at least 14 people died.

There’s considerable variation among states in the frequency of fatal police crashes, reflecting both differing crime rates as well as different policies on when and how police can pursue criminal suspects. The lowest death rates are in the northeast and northwest parts of the country, while the highest are in parts of the south and central U.S.

A resident of Georgia, for instance, is about 10 times more likely to die in a car chase than one who lives in Vermont or Rhode Island.

Minnesota’s rate of eight deaths per million is lower than that of any of its neighbors. Across the border in South Dakota, for instance, the odds of dying in a chase are nearly double.

Minnesota law enforcement agencies generally have to adhere to statewide pursuit guidelines, which state that officers must weigh the threat posed by the criminal suspect against the “risk to the community created by the pursuit.” But individual agencies have leeway in how they apply that policy.

The issue drew considerable media attention in 2021, when Minneapolis Police Department officer Brian Cummings chased a group of suspected thieves through a residential neighborhood, running a red light and ultimately striking and killing Leneal Frazier, who was not involved in the case. Last summer Cummings was sentenced to 270 days in jail for criminal vehicular homicide.

That sort of accountability for police who initiate fatal pursuits is rare, according to the Chronicle’s data. The paper was able to identify 140 officers across the U.S. who appeared to have broken either the law or department policy during a fatal chase. Only six have been convicted of criminal charges, while seven additional cases are under review.

Some Minnesota cities and police departments are working to reduce the odds that a police chase could turn deadly. Last year, the police department in Woodbury purchased a set of launchable GPS devices intended to allow officers to track the location of fleeing suspects without having to follow them in their patrol vehicles.

That technology was featured in a recent Department of Justice report on ways for law enforcement agencies to lessen the dangers associated with high-speed pursuits.