Arizona police used a grappler device and crashed the wrong vehicle during a pursuit
Last October, police officers in Tempe, Arizona were in pursuit of a white, early 2000s Buick Verrano. While trying to listen for the suspect’s exact location or direction of travel, a detective spotted a vehicle that almost perfectly matched the vehicle officers were searching for.
Then the officer rammed the back of the Verrano and deployed a grappler device. The device secures a fugitive’s vehicle to the officer’s cruiser to ensure they don’t escape, in case you didn’t know. The device’s deployment punctured the gas tank, too.
The officer pulled over the Verrano, approached the vehicle with his gun drawn, and ordered the occupants to exit the vehicle with their hands up. After asking the driver if anyone else was in the vehicle, the driver responded, “My daughter,” and that’s when the officer realized his mistake.
“Oh s***,” his body cam footage recorded him saying, provided by ABC. Another officer told the first officer they had pulled over the wrong car. Still, the officer instructed the driver to walk backward toward them.
Police compensation was minimal
A spokesperson for the City of Tempe said the risk management department paid the driver $500 for her trouble. Though, there’s no way of knowing if that was enough to pay for the damages.
No officers were disciplined after the incident, too. However, they reportedly went through additional training on how to properly identify a suspect’s vehicle.
ACLU rep says it should scare you
Jared Keenan, the legal director for the ACLU of Arizona said the incident, on top of the department’s reaction, should concern drivers.
“That should scare anybody,” he said after watching the footage. “Because what this says is, ‘If you happen to have a car that looks like a car the police are searching for, you might be violently stopped in this way as well.'”
He doesn’t think the officer’s excuse was a good one, either.,
“This is why there are license plates that individualize vehicles and can allow the police to determine whether it is the actual vehicle they’re looking for or not,” he continued.
