Report: How Border Patrol Pursuits Are Becoming More Dangerous

Speaker 1: 00:00 This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm Maureen Cavenaugh, high speed car chases by law enforcement. Used to happen often in southern California. TV helicopter is followed the chase, which sometimes ended in spectacular crashes, but about 10 years ago, most police agencies realize that chases were too dangerous. Too many people were being injured or killed. So they tightened up their pursuit policies. One of the agencies that hasn't is the u s border patrol and investigative report by The Los Angeles Times and Propublica has found that during the last four years at least 250 people have been injured and 22 people have been killed as a result of high speed chases by border patrol agents. Joining me is Brittany Mahia, a reporter with the Los Angeles Times Metro Desk. She covers stories about immigration and race and Brittany, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me. This is one of the first times that chases by the u s border patrol have been evaluated publicly. Were you able to get information about the chases from border patrol itself? Speaker 2: 01:06 Yeah, so that was really our struggle. We had put in Foya requests, we had been trying to get information from border patrol for several months and they just did not get back to us. And so really what we ended up having to do as mining thousands more than 9,000 federal criminal complaints filed against smugglers from 2015 to 2018 and use that as our point of reference. Speaker 1: 01:27 And within those criminal complaints they would have a narrative of how the arrest was made and so forth. And that's how you found out about the chases that right? Yes, exactly. What did the data reveal about how often the border patrol engages in these kinds of pursuits and what the results of the chases of Ben? Speaker 2: 01:45 Well, so from what we found, and you kind of touched on it as far as as far as injury wise, but we have found that, you know, there was more than 500 pursuits and of those one in three ended in a crash. You know, we looked at kind of how much, how many times they rely on air support, which actually isn't very often, you know, the tactics that they use and kind of looked at how the danger has ramped up in these past two years from what we found and how, you know, human smuggling prosecutions have increased by 25% the number of people injured in crashes has increased by 42% so we actually were able to pull out a good amount of information from those documents. Speaker 1: 02:19 What does the border patrol's say about its pursuit policy and how does that compare to other policies at other law enforcement agencies about Chase's? Speaker 2: 02:27 That's what's difficult is was getting a response out of border patrol was really challenging. You know, any response to what their policy was. I mean they had updated it, but it's been several years since it's been updated and we weren't able to get, you know, as a straight response or any response really, you know, about that policy. We were just trying to understand why it hadn't changed. And My coworker, James Queally had been looking and, and he's done a lot of reporting on the law enforcement side and he had talked to a lot of police departments who have changed their policies. And so it's just unclear why it hasn't kept up with the other law agencies. Speaker 1: 03:00 You also mentioned the board of patrol still uses tactics like spike strips that in many cases escalate the danger of the chase. Tell us more about that. Speaker 2: 03:11 Yeah, we had tracked as far as how many times spike strips were used and when we actually, we went on a ride along with border patrol in El Centro sector and they kind of told us, you know, the spike strip serve safe, you know, they won't cause it tires to blow out. But we had found, you know, several cases where the car ended up swerving or running over the spike strips and continuing to go. And then just like hitting something and flipping over, which happened in November crash. And so we found good a lot of instances where he had a spike strips were used at speeds. Like in November, I think the car was going over a hundred miles per hour and they threw the spike strips and the car ended up flipping over and three people were killed. Speaker 1: 03:48 Yeah. I want you to tell us more about that. What you're referring to is a deadly crash that took place in November of 2018 along the US, Mexico border near San Diego. Off I ate. Can you set the scene for us? What happened that night? Speaker 2: 04:01 Basically what had happened was, uh, and I had spoken to these men who were in Mexico at length and they actually had waited in Tijuana to cross. They thought that they were actually going to be walking. Then they were ended up being put in the back of this pickup truck. And so it was like eight people in the back of the police together in the back of the truck. Uh, you know, laying head to foot. And then in the front there was three other people. So as they were driving, border patrol I guess had gotten a report that an illegal crossing that was going on. And so they started to look for the car and the truck had a missing mirror, so they started to follow the car. The truck started going really fast, they continue to pursue. And then I think they might've lost sight of it at one point. And then when it was going over a hundred on the freeway, border patrol officers throughout spike strips onto the road. So the car ends up hitting the spike strips, swerving up over an embankment and flipping over. And when border patrol arrives, and you could see in the documents they kind of described, there were bodies all over the freeway. And so there was three people ended up dying and a lot of people really seriously injured. Speaker 1: 05:02 Now there are many police agencies have changed their pursuit policies to make sure that the officers are chasing people they suspect of violent felonies. Is that the case with the border patrol? Speaker 2: 05:13 Yeah. And so that was always interesting to us too. When we went out, we spoke with the assistant patrol chief of the El Centro sector and he basically made the point that they never know, you know, what's in the car. So basically, you know, they, they have no idea and he used an extreme example of like, it could be terrorism related, we just have no idea what's happening. But we found really that there weren't that many cases, at least in the documents we found, you know, drugs or weapons being found in the cars. It was mostly just people who are trying to cross illegally. Speaker 1: 05:43 Apparently as you told us, the number of crashes and chases have been rising the last two years. Were you able to figure out why? Speaker 2: 05:50 So we don't know for sure. That's the issue is we don't know for sure. We had hoped that we could get a little bit more, you know, that border patrol could shed some light on this. Really what we looked at in our, considering it's just, you know, there's been more of an aggressive immigration enforcement. I know that there's been that talking about Trump by early on it was like the handcuffs are off and so that could be a factor. You know, the amount of violence in Mexico right now and people trying to flee. You know, I interviewed actually a lot of people who had been in the cars, you know, that we're trying to cross illegally. And some of them had actually applied for asylum and been denied, and then just felt like they had no other option. And so this was their last resort. So we'd find we're finding a couple of different factors there. The investigative report called chasing danger was published last week in the La Times. And I've been speaking with La Times reporter, Brittany Mahia and Brittany, thank you. Thank you so much.