The Thrilling High-Speed Car Chases of Los Angeles

(light chimes)

(changes into intense music) This is a car city.

This is a city that is traversed by,

you know, hundreds of miles of freeways.

So there's a lot of room for someone

to speed and to move quickly and to be pursued.

And it's also the entertainment capital of the world.

And these pursuits have become

this perverse form of entertainment.

[Man] Breaking news here to tell

you about a high-speed pursuit.

[Woman] Back to California now,

because something extraordinary is-

Wild scene on the streets of Southern California.

[Woman] This is out of Los Angeles,

the world headquarters for all things car shows.

[Man] He's going right up against the curb right there.

[Mary] Pursuits really became a thing with O.J.

[Man] Simpson is in the driver's seat.

We've received a report of a gun in the car.

[Mary] They predated O.J.,

but that kind of elevated the pursuit

to something much larger.

[O.J.] All I did was love Nicole. All I did was love her.

That was the one that made everyone realize

Wow, this is, like this incredible spectator sport.

[Man] Look this is all over TV, just so people know,

and this is like sport in Los Angeles.

[Woman] Look at them.

(police sirens) (serious music)

[Mary] Angelenones are obsessed with these pursuits,

because of, I think many different reasons.

One is, they're totally unpredictable.

You have no idea what's going to happen.

So there's just this kind of

inherent excitement around that.

[Woman] Oh, whoa! Oh my gosh!

[Man] Oh no! No, no, no!

But what is really strange, too is

it's a way to get to know the city better.

You go to a meeting in LA, you show up at a

meeting across town, the first thing someone's gonna

ask you is, How was the traffic? How'd you get here?

[Man] We are now southbound, along Main Street,

heading down towards Imperial Highway.

[Woman] York Boulevard. York Boulevard.

Monterey turns into York Boulevard.

[Man] This time of day, the 10 Freeway,

that's not the place to play.

There is a whole vocabulary around this,

and why in the world should I know

what a spike strip or a PIT maneuver is?

But I do now, from watching these for so many years.

[Man] Perfect PIT maneuver right there.

[Man] But what does it all mean?

Pursuit Intervention Technique.

PIT is a forced rotational stop.

[Man] Yeah, there it is!

[Woman] Getting ready to setup that spike strip.

Let's watch this be deployed.

[Man] It's a hollow tube with a point on it.

You're basically putting a straw into the tire.

[Man] That wheel totally gone!

[Woman] Boom! He's got him, the vehicle's spun out.

[Mary] Every news station in Los Angeles

has a helicopter that's on call 24 hours a day.

They go out to cover fires or accidents.

I mean they're mostly for purposes of traffic coverage,

but because pursuits are now so

interwoven into traffic coverage,

like it becomes the main thing that

they're doing in the evenings.

[Man] It's become so much of a staple

in Southern California that at times

it feels like we have one every day.

[Man] There! Look at that! Whoa ho!

I think this really is a 15 minute of fame

situation, but for the most part,

you can't name people other than O.J.,

who have ever been involved in a police pursuit.

So you have to wonder like, what is it that they do it for?

I never understand, no matter how many car chases I watch,

why do they think they're gonna get away with it?

(expressive music)

[Mary] Last year, there was a crazy pursuit.

These guys were doing donuts on Hollywood Boulevard.

Oh! Oh wow!

[Woman] They're just having, they're

trying to have a good time right now.

[Woman] What!

[Mary] And then they ended up going by restaurants,

where people were watching it in a bar.

And people would run out on the sidewalk

and, you know, cheer them on as they were going.

(crowd screams)

And, the TMZ tour bus tried to stop them on the freeway.

[Woman] Oh! Are they gonna stop them? Oh! Yes!

[Mary] And one of the guys

threw a sandwich at the TMZ bus.

[Man] How's this for only an LA moment?

[Woman] It doesn't get more Hollywood than that. TMZ!

[Mary] And they ended up pulling over

in this neighborhood, getting out of their cars.

All the neighborhood's coming out, taking selfies with them.

You know, they were just like,

All right. We're just gonna wait here to get arrested.

And that was a particularly crazy chase.

You remember those moments,

but you don't remember the drivers.

You remember the moment.

(expressive rock music)

There is constant debate around pursuits.

(thought-provoking music)

Both from an ethical side, from new's stations,

who really wonder is this the best use of our time?

To the law enforcement agencies who get

a lot of flack when a pursuit ends tragically.

[Man] Police officials say live coverage

of high-speed chases is downright dangerous.

These recent shots of bank robbers

throwing cash out of a moving vehicle in LA,

sent viewers flooding into the streets.

You don't have to show it while it's live. Show it later.

[Mary] You see people almost hit,

all of the time. It's really a miracle.

When a car's going 100 miles an hour

down a residential street that it's not

carnage all the way along its path.

[Man] Yeah. Whoa! The skateboarder

right there. That guy almost got it!

This is the reasons why these are so dangerous.

These are the reasons why (fades out).

(police sirens) (despondent music)

It is easy because you're at such a distance,

to forget that there's a whole human element to this.

(melancholy music)

In 1999, there was a really horrific incident

that people thought might initiate the end of pursuits.

(melancholy music)

There was a very depressed man

who led police on a pursuit,

that ended up on a freeway interchange.

And, at the end of the chase, he actually set his

pick-up truck on fire, and his dog was inside.

There were seven helicopters up in the air, covering this.

And some of them had tight shots.

This was all on live TV.

(plaintive music)

And then he took out a rifle, and he killed himself.

(gun bangs) (despondent music)

[Man] It was a particularly disastrous ending to what

has become near daily fodder for cable and local news.

[Mary] And a lot of news directors after that,

kind of said, Okay we've got blood

on our hands here. We can't do this.

Let's consider not running these pursuits.

But, the ratings were just so great,

that they couldn't do that.

Statistically, about a person a day dies

in the country, as the result of a pursuit.

But also, that's what keeps people watching these.

It's a gladiator sport.

There's definitely been a conversation

around the media's culpability in this.

If they stopped covering this completely, would they stop?

There's always gonna be pursuits.

Anywhere in the world. Right?

There's always gonna be someone trying to escape the cops.

But the appeal that, Hey, I could do this,

and all my friends are gonna see it.

And I can actually text them while I'm doing it,

cause I can let them know, hey I'm doing this.

If those weren't televised, I think that they would plummet.

(intense music)

[Stu] There's been a lot of talk about pursuits,

and what they should do, and how they should do it,

and everybody wants to weigh in.

They say we shouldn't televise them,

and we're just giving these guys their five minutes of fame.

But, I like to think that we're keeping

an eye on it because we're trying to warn the public.

And that's what also law enforcement does.

[Man] And what's more, viewers want

to watch these scenes, which is why

this classic American spectacle,

is not likely to disappear from

the airwaves at any time soon.

[Man] Oh!

Even though I am morally conflicted

about watching a police pursuit,

if there's one going on, I'm gonna turn on the TV.

(serious music)