« Ice Climbing | Main | Off again... to SF »

November 18, 2003

The car chase that wasn't

I was driving home from Phoenix when I caught "This American Life" on the local PRI station. I miss NPR/PRI quite a bit. The theme of the show was Like it Or Not, stories of inevitability. There were a number of interesting stories, but one in particular was just amazing. It was about a car chase in LA that was unlike any other car chase. It started like many car chases. The driver had a minor fender bender with another car and just decided to keep driving. Cops started pursuing him, lights flashing, helicopter following. The driver was obeying all traffic laws. He was well within the speed limit, he was stopping at all lights and stop signs. He was doing everything legit, except not stopping for the cops. The police chief decided the safest course of action would be to just let him go. They had his license plate number and knew who he was and where he lived. They figured he'd go home eventually. So, all the cops backed off. At this point, all the news media, having nothing further to report, backed off as well. That is, except KCAL. They decided to keep running the 'chase' because their ratings are 4x better while covering their weekly car chase. So they continued following, in their helicopter, on live TV, while a car, with no police chasing it, kept driving aimlessly, all the while, without breaking any laws or for that matter, making any other moves which would be newsworthy. The 2 news reporters covering the event quickly lost track of things to talk about. After 4 hours, at one point, one of them commented that the car must have very good gas mileage. They talked about how undercover cops must be following, though they weren't.

The car entered Inglewood and 2 rogue cops who were mad that they police were letting them go, decided to start following him. They followed him until their police chief, who had seem them following the guy on the news, told them to stop. Finally, the guys car started running out of gas and pulled over. Turns out, he thought he was being followed the whole time. He was surprised when no cops came up after he stopped. He was just pulled over. At this point, the wife of one of the Inglewood policeman who was following him, called to tell him the cops were looking dumb. They looked like they just let the guy go. So they drove to the car where the guy got out and gave himself up, without a fuss.

Years later, the lady doing the piece for This American Life, interviewed the guy. It was the first time the media had ever tried to contact him. His story: He had closed some big deal at work. To celebrate he went to some hotel and did some coke. When he was leaving he had the VERY minor fender bender. He knew the cops were following him and at no point did he think he'd get away. He had NO plan. His only thought was to drive until he was a little less noticeably high. At no point did he even realize they had stopped chasing him. Probably because he never thought he'd get away.

For four hours, thousands of people watched a car drive around LA, obeying every law. Still people couldn't change the channel. Its a crazy world we live in.

Posted by wonko at November 18, 2003 08:57 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wayfargone.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/167

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?