Lawsuit shines spotlight on police foot pursuits

Raymond Pelzer was playing dice on a known West Philadelphia drug corner when two police officers approached him.

Pelzer, 25, handed over his identification but ran off before the officers learned that he was wanted for a probation violation.

Moments later, an officer cornered Pelzer in a yard. Pelzer refused to show his hands, appeared to be searching in his waistband, and eventually thrust out his hand while holding a cell phone, according to court records.

Officer Marvin Burton fired once, killing Pelzer, who was not armed.

Three separate investigations - by the District Attorney's Office, the police Internal Affairs Division, and the Firearms Discharge Review Board - all ruled the 2006 shooting justifiable.

But lawyers for Pelzer's family say there was no need to chase him through the neighborhood's alleys - Pelzer posed no immediate threat, and officers knew that he lived nearby.

In a federal lawsuit, they argued that Pelzer would be alive today if the Police Department had "commonsense" guidelines for foot pursuits, which they say are "strong in emotion, weak in tactics."

A federal judge recently said that argument could have merit before a jury.

The family is seeking monetary damages and might ask for a court order forcing the Police Department to adopt foot-pursuit guidelines.

Pelzer's death came a year after the department's former integrity officer issued a report urging the department to ban common but questionable foot-pursuit tactics, and to set guidelines for when officers could chase fleeing suspects.

The report noted that nearly half of all police shootings between 1998 and 2003 happened after foot chases.

The integrity officer, Ellen Green-Ceisler, is now a judge on Philadelphia Common Pleas Court.

The officers in the Pelzer shooting, including the one who fired the fatal shot, made several of the tactical errors outlined in the integrity officer's report, said Gregg Zeff, a Pelzer family attorney.

Foot chases, he said, often can lead officers into dangerous confrontations where they may have no choice but to shoot.

"A lot of cities have foot-pursuit policies, and they save lives," he said. "Really, it's an officer-safety issue."

Despite Green-Ceisler's report, the department has not instituted a policy, though officers receive training on foot chases.

In September, a federal judge ruled that a jury potentially could find the city "deliberately indifferent" for not setting guidelines.

"Foot pursuits are hardly uncommon for a police force serving a city as large and populous as Philadelphia," wrote U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel. "Accepting this statement as true, the failure to provide a policy . . . could be considered an apparent or obvious omission."

Through a department spokesman, Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said he had no plans to create a policy. While a model policy is available, experts can't say how many cities have adopted it.

Lt. Frank Vanore, the department spokesman, said chasing down fleeing suspects was part of the job, and Ramsey did not want to take that discretion away from officers.

"We always train them to use caution and don't do something to put yourself at risk or someone else at risk," he said. "When someone commits a crime . . . trying to effect an arrest is what we do."

Attorneys also have argued that the city should not be held liable for not having a foot-pursuit policy if the shooting was justified and Pelzer's rights were not violated.

They also said the lack of a foot-pursuit policy was immaterial in the Pelzer case because the deadly confrontation occurred at the end of the chase.

The city attorneys said that the department provided officers with an extensive policy and training on the use of deadly force, and that Burton had acted properly within those guidelines.

"The law does not require [Burton] to have to take cover and wait to see what was in Mr. Pelzer's hand," they wrote. "That split second of waiting could have proven fatal to Burton had Mr. Pelzer a gun in his hand."

Philadelphia officers are taught to consider a number of factors in a foot pursuit, including the offense involved, the environment of the chase, and even the officer's own fitness, according to court documents.

But without a policy, Zeff said, the training can be ignored on the street.

"It's like driving while talking on a cell phone," he said. "It's dangerous, but people still do it. Now, it's the law and you can't do it."

Officer Burton, who responded to a radio dispatch about a fleeing suspect, split off from his partner and continued to chase Pelzer after briefly losing sight of him, according to court documents.

Green-Ceisler's report said that officers should not split from their partners unless the suspect poses an immediate threat, and that they should stop chasing if they lose sight of the suspect, Zeff said.

The report said officers often put themselves in dangerous situations to make arrests because of peer pressure and a "John Wayne syndrome."

"If you talk to police, and I represent a lot of officers, the only people who chase people down the street are the young ones," Zeff said. "In our case, it's classic. They have his ID. He lives around the corner. . . . I think that Mr. Pelzer would be alive today if there was a policy."

The city's attorneys, however, said Green-Ceisler's report did not claim the lack of a foot-pursuit policy had led to bad police shootings. Therefore, the need for a policy would not have been "plainly obvious" to the department.

In fact, the report, which studied police shootings from 1998 to 2003, did not determine whether any of those shootings had violated the rights of citizens.

In those years, police officers fired on suspects 285 times, while officers reported being assaulted by suspects 6,549 times. The study concluded that "the use of firearms by Philadelphia police officers is not widespread or gratuitous."

In 2002, the FBI's Law Enforcement Bulletin recommended that police departments adopt foot-pursuit policies for officer safety, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police drafted a model policy in 2003.

Police in Cincinnati and Austin, Texas, instituted policies in recent years after controversial shootings, and the U.S. Department of Justice recommended that Miami police do the same after reviewing police shootings there.

While nearly every police department has a policy for car chases, no one knows how many departments have adopted guidelines for foot pursuits, said Robert Kaminski, an associate professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina.

Kaminski, who surveyed deputies at the Richland County Sheriff's Department in South Carolina for a 2006 study, said there had been almost no research into the impact and effectiveness of foot-pursuit policies.

While he believes restrictive policies would reduce the risk to officers, Kaminski said police would come under fire "if someone gets away because of a policy and something bad happens."

In his survey, 63 percent of the deputies favored written guidelines, but nearly all said the ultimate decision to chase should be left to the officer.

"Police officers don't like to let the bad guys get away," Kaminski said, "so the instinct is to chase."

The two sides in the Pelzer suit began settlement talks last month.

If the Pelzer family's suit is successful, Philadelphia police could be forced to create a policy. Zeff said he would ask for a court order instructing Ramsey, who took office in 2008, to do so.

"This didn't happen on his watch," Zeff said, "but it shouldn't happen on his watch in the future."