I once had a high school teacher who was a SWAT officer in his previous career. He shared that sometimes, a SWAT team simply showing up was enough to get a suspect to throw in the towel. Well, nobody told this guy. He saw a gap, hopped in his Jeep Gladiator, and ran like hell. 

The Jeep Gladiator owner took a video game approach to losing the cops

A popular social media video with almost 200,000 views shows an armored police vehicle with a long appendage lining up with a home. It’s a ramming arm, and the vehicle is obviously postured to knock the door down so SWAT officers can rush in and make an arrest. 

“Come to the front door with your hands up!” you can hear police officers issuing commands over the loudspeaker. But this suspect had different plans. After a moment of tension, a dark, late-model Jeep Gladiator pulled out of the driveway, right past the large police rig. “Ooooooh!” the video-taker shouted.

Now, it was a soupy, rainy day on the East side of the Motor City. A Ford Mustang GT or a Dodge Charger R/T Scat Pack would be a tail-happy and possibly crash-prone getaway car. The Jeep Gladiator, on the other hand, was in its element with its standard four-wheel drive (4×4).  

One minute, the Gladiator was pulling onto the nearby street with its lights on and its wipers redirecting the onslaught of Detroit rain. The next moment, the Jeep pickup truck was in the wind. Surprisingly, cross traffic wasn’t stopped and continued mere feet from the ongoing raid. Worse yet, there didn’t seem to be any units waiting nearby. At a glance, the Gladiator appears to have slipped away scot-free. 

It almost looks like something from a movie. A brazen, almost cartoony escape in broad daylight. Metro Detroit News reports that the Detroit Police Department (DPD) wasn’t the agency behind the raid. Either way, mistakes were made. At that moment, a Jeep Gladiator seemed to be the right tool for the job.