After Deadly Car Chases, San Diego Police Oversight Body Wants To Restrict Pursuits

Every year, police departments nationwide initiate thousands of high-speed car chases, often with little public inquiry regarding protocols and policy. But recently, this practice has come under closer scrutiny in San Diego following the deaths of two young children, a teen driver, and an officer as a result of dangerous high-speed police chases. Public safety advocates are now asking the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) to reform its vehicle pursuit policies as deadly incidents have led some residents to reconsider whether the risks of initiating these pursuits—which can escalate to dangerous chases with speeds topping 100 miles per hour through densely populated neighborhoods—truly outweigh the often meager rewards. 

This review of SDPD’s practices is being spearheaded by San Diego’s Commission on Police Practices (CPP), a civilian oversight body responsible for reviewing policies, practices, and specific incidents involving the department, and making recommendations for changes. The commission was created in 2020 as a way to increase community safety, police accountability, and public trust in law enforcement.

Now after more than a year of investigation, the commission is tackling the department’s vehicle pursuit policy. The body recently sent recommendations to SDPD Chief Scott Wahl requesting that the department limit vehicle pursuits to the most severe incidents. The commission also requested that the department set consistent standards for how to pursue vehicles safely, and for data collection after the fact.

Armando Flores, a lifelong resident of South San Diego, and the CCP’s District 9 Representative, says that prior to this investigation, minimal action has been taken to enforce police oversight regarding high-speed pursuits. And what little police leaders have done in the past hasn’t been properly tracked to monitor whether implementations had a net positive effect on the community. 

“This has been an issue for decades, and when you look at the history of San Diego and all of California, this is something people have been trying to sound the alarm on,” Flores explained. 

San Diego’s Commission on Police Practices began reviewing SDPD’s policy on chases in December 2023 following a fiery crash caused by a high-speed police pursuit that killed two young brothers. The boys Malikai, and Mason Orozco-Romero, aged 8 and 4, respectively, were passengers riding in the backseat of their mother’s Honda on an off-ramp of Interstate 805 when it was rear-ended by a fleeing vehicle. Angel Velasquez Salgado, the 20-year-old unlicensed driver, was allegedly fleeing from police after officers attempted to pull him over for a faulty headlight. Salgado struck the family’s vehicle, sending it careening down an embankment, where it struck a tree and caught fire. The boys’ mother, Victoria Hayes, and her front seat passenger, Lisbeth Martinez, survived the crash with severe injuries and are now suing the city, alleging that the department and the officers who initiated the pursuit acted negligently. 

In a complaint filed in San Diego County Superior Court, lawyers for Hayes and Martinez allege that police “never should have engaged (Salgado) in a high-speed chase and negligently failed to terminate the pursuit prior to causing harm and death to the public.” Hayes and Martinez also allege that police “did not have a good cause” to begin the pursuit originating from a routine traffic stop and that the SDPD “failed to have a proper pursuit policy in place.”

In the year since the boys’ deaths, the commission has analyzed data from more than 1,000 chases collected over the past five years. In a report it presented to the city in November, the commission found that 60 percent of SDPD chases started over minor infractions, like speeding or running a red light. Just about 1 in 5 police pursuits involved any kind of collision that caused an injury. Likewise, the commission found that only 30 percent of pursuits resulted in arrests, and even fewer resulted in convictions.

The oversight commission also found troubling racial disparities in who police pursue during these chases. Data shows that more than 50 percent of SDPD pursuits involve Black or Latino suspects, while only 16 percent involve white suspects—even as Black and Latino residents comprise 6 percent and 30 percent of San Diego’s population, respectively, while white residents account for the majority. 

Khalid Alexander, a resident of Southeast San Diego and president of Pillars of the Community, an organization dedicated to helping those affected by the criminal justice system, says the commission’s findings are disappointing but predictable conclusions indicative of a long line of biased policing by the SDPD. “Frankly, no one I know would be surprised by these because we are the ones getting harassed on a daily basis,” Alexander explained. “Report after report, from third parties and from law enforcement themselves, show that Black and Brown San Diegans are always more impacted by the dark side of policing. They pull over Black people disproportionately. Their dogs attack us disproportionately, and they use their technology to surveil us disproportionately.” 

The grievances of residents like Alexander who believe that SDPD has not been held to account for their actions have not fallen on deaf ears. To guide their policy recommendations, the commission analyzed a 2023 report by the Police Executive Research Forum’s (PERF) about managing the risks of police pursuits, which recommended that chases only be initiated if a violent crime has already occurred and there’s an immediate risk that the suspect will commit more violence.

Last summer, the commission made preliminary policy recommendations advocating that SDPD limit vehicle pursuits to only incidents involving violent felonies. Other recommendations included creating a process for department supervisors to oversee an officer’s decisions on pursuits, the creation of a vehicle pursuit review board that includes at least one CCP member, and implementing more training for SDPD officers.

In November, the commission sent its updated final recommendations for vehicle pursuits to the SDPD that ask for officers not to pursue drivers for minor infractions including unarmed property offenses, misdemeanors, and traffic violations that don’t pose an immediate and serious danger to the public. Those recommendations do not, however, advocate limiting the pursuit of some other misdemeanors and felonies, such as reckless driving, or conduct that creates a direct and serious threat to public safety.

In addition to setting a standard for the types of infractions that justify a vehicle pursuit, the recommendations include steps to minimize the impact of pursuits when they do happen, and a requirement to standardize practices across the department. There are provisions that officers should verbally and physically acknowledge the end of pursuits by pulling over from the road, and that the department should standardize the data collected after a pursuit to include injuries, deaths, and damages. The commission approved its final recommendations and formally sent them to SDPD leadership on Nov. 18, giving the department 60 days to respond.

Alexander from Pillars of the Community lamented how a police culture of impunity and indifference has seeded the ground which allows police to arrive at a place where such monitoring is necessary. “When you have people with guns on their hips and badges on their chests which allow them to kill, you create a crazy power dynamic”, he said.

“We don’t need more reports, we need accountability. My hope is that the Commission will be able to hold the police accountable for all the things we have been complaining about for years.”

The commission’s recommendations, if officials adopt them, could break the city away from the dangerous status quo of vehicle pursuit practices around the country. According to an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle, at least 3,336 people across the country were killed in police pursuits between 2017 and 2022. More than half of the fatalities resulting from those pursuits were either passengers in fleeing vehicles or bystanders, and less than 1 percent of those killed were officers.

Guidelines for police pursuits largely vary from department to department, and even official protocols are unclear. The SDPD’s current pursuit procedures require officers to “evaluate the risks” of high-speed pursuits, a vague and ambiguous standard that leaves much up to officer discretion. 

Community organizers and police reform advocates have long argued that high-speed police pursuits pose an inherent threat to public safety. And no policy, they argue, can keep pedestrians and bystanders completely safe when vehicles are pursued at dangerous speeds, especially when chases are initiated in urban areas predominantly populated by working-class communities of color where the likelihood of encountering other vehicles and pedestrians is significantly higher. 

“In other communities, they follow the law, they don’t speed,” Flores, the District 9 Commissioner said. “They don’t go over 60 MPH in a school zone; they’re careful. In our communities, we regularly see them blaring by going 70 MPH in a school zone to chase down someone who didn’t signal”, Flores lamented.

High-speed pursuits also pose a significant risk to police officers who initiate chases. Last August, shortly after the commission had sent a preliminary version of its policy recommendations limit vehicle pursuits to incidents involving only violent felonies, an SDPD officer was killed and another seriously injured after being hit by a car while responding to a vehicle pursuit.

Officer Austin Machitar and his partner Zachary Martinez were responding to a call to pursue a vehicle driven by a 16-year-old driver, Edgar Giovanny Oviedo. Other officers initially gave chase but called off the pursuit due to dangerous speeds, but Oviedo still crashed into the parked patrol car shortly after the pursuit was called off. Machitar was declared at the scene while Oviedo succumbed to his injuries at the hospital

Consistently, vehicular accidents have accounted for the second most common cause of death for on-duty officers. In 2024, 36 officers were killed in automobile or motorcycle crashes or were ‘struck by a vehicle’ (not to be conflated with vehicular assaults). These deaths comprised nearly a quarter of the 153 on-duty deaths of police officers logged nationwide in 2024, and cumulatively were the second most common cause of death after gunfire.

Despite high-profile deaths of bystanders and officers in San Diego in recent years, the San Diego Police Officers Association (SDPOA) vehemently opposed the commission’s preliminary recommendations when they were presented in August. A month before the crash that killed Machitar, the SDPOA released a statement via X saying the commission’s recommendations were “misguided and pose significant risks to our community.” 

The SDPOA did not respond to requests for comment from Bolts regarding whether its stance has changed following the release of the Commission’s final recommendations.

Lupe Lozano-Diaz, a healthcare provider and at-large representative on the police oversight commission, lamented the police union’s resistance to the commission’s initial recommendations to set more guardrails around police chases. “They’re very anti-change,” Lozano-Diaz charged. “In any other institution like the business industry and the medical field, you see people who are always looking for change or something that will be useful. But, in the law enforcement field, it’s just so closed-minded.” 

SDPD Chief Wahl and his team plan to formally present their response to the commission’s recommendations to limit police chases on Feb.19 during a meeting that will be open to public commentDespite the SDPOA’s resistance to the commission’s preliminary recommendations, Flores and other commission members are hopeful that Wahl and other police leaders will be receptive to its final recommendations, and that an agreement can be reached that will improve both public and officer safety.

 “The goal here isn’t to be antagonistic. We’re trying to work with them and see if there is a path forward with the community to build trust back”, Flores said. “These are a very powerful set of recommendations that will change the way that the SDPD works with the public and with the Latino and Black community entirely. And that is something that has never been challenged in the history of San Diego.”