Family wants to cut deaths from police pursuits
"I cannot just sit and let it keep going on. I would like to make a difference so this doesn't happen to somebody else's family," Margaret Geier, Johnny's sister, said. "This happens so much. It's turning into an epidemic."
The Forum that ran with this story will be posted soon.By Kimball Perry
Cincinnati Enquirer
Johnny Kallmeyer should be celebrating the holidays.Instead, his family will be visiting his grave.
Kallmeyer was killed in 2007 when the motorcycle he was driving was struck by a criminal driving a speeding car chased by police.
More than two years after that death, with Kallmeyer's killer in prison for 25 years, his family has settled a civil suit it filed against the pursuing police and is active in a national group that advocates for police pursuits that don't kill.
"There has to be a safer way than putting people in jeopardy," said Margaret Geier, one of Kallmeyer's 13 siblings.
Kallmeyer, 54, was returning Sept. 2, 2007, from a niece's birthday party to his Middletown home. He was driving his motorcycle north on Hamilton Avenue that becomes Pleasant Avenue in Butler County.
At the same time, police were at a DUI checkpoint on Pleasant Avenue in Fairfield. When police saw John Haugabook driving a 1996 Cadillac Deville toward the checkpoint and then do a U-turn, a Butler County sheriff's deputy raced after him. Speeds exceeded 100 mph.
Haugabook's car crashed into another car that then hit the motorcycle Kallmeyer was driving north at the John Gray Road intersection that is the border between Hamilton and Butler counties.
Kallmeyer's estate sued the Butler County Sheriff's Office, alleging its officer disregarded citizen safety in the pursuit.
"They get their adrenaline pumping and they lose sight of what they're supposed to be doing," Geier said.
That suit ended earlier this month when Butler County agreed to pay Kallmeyer's estate $150,000.
No disciplinary action was taken against the officer involved in the pursuit, according to Maj. Anthony Dwyer of the Butler County Sheriff's department.
"I'm not picking on police. I'm not anti-police. I just want people to be aware with all these police pursuits," she added.
She and her family also turned to VIPS, Voices Insisting on Pursuit Safety. It's a nonprofit agency of about 700 people led by founder Candy Priano, whose 15-year-old daughter who was killed Jan. 22, 2002, on her way to a high school basketball game when the van she was riding in was struck by a car being chased by police.
Now, she and her Chico, Calif.-based agency help develop or stress safer police pursuit policies.
"We exist to save lives and assist the innocent victims' families," Priano said. "These chases are not accidents. Some drivers choose to flee and police choose to chase them."
Geier found a sounding board in Priano and a cause for her brother.
"I cannot just sit and let it keep going on. I would like to make a difference so this doesn't happen to somebody else's family," Geier said. "This happens so much. It's turning into an epidemic."
There are no official national statistics kept on the number of innocent people killed annually in police pursuits. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration uses a voluntary tracking system that relies on individual police agencies to report police chase deaths.
But VIPS amassed data that shows 4,500 innocent bystanders have been killed in the U.S. in police pursuits since 1982, about three per week. The same data shows a police officer is killed in a pursuit every 11 weeks.
"They're hurting their own people even," Geier said. "It's totally out of hand."
Sgt. Glen Smith disagrees.
"First and foremost ... is safety. Nobody wants to see anyone hurt," said Smith of the Hamilton County Park Rangers and president of the board of directors of the Hamilton County Police Association. "If a person didn't run, there wouldn't be a pursuit. Officers don't look forward to pursuits."But Priano noted her daughter was killed when police where chasing what they called a stolen car, even though they knew it was reported stolen by another woman who knew her teen daughter took it without permission.
Another woman and her unborn baby were killed, Priano noted, when police chased a driver suspected of stealing a vacuum cleaner.
"We're trying to limit the number of chases," she said. "A (vacuum cleaner) is replaceable. A human life is not."
Kallmeyer's death left a legacy.
Because of his death, VIPS created a checkpoint procedure - authored by a retired police chief - it wants police to use. It
calls for police to use stop sticks on cars avoiding checkpoints, stressing that if the fleeing driver avoids those sticks,
there is to be no chase. Instead, it wants police to use their video cameras to record the license plate number and find
the driver later.
"We just need to look at it a little better," Geier said, "and their pursuit policies need to be fine-tuned because innocent people are getting killed."
Additional Facts
On the Web
PursuitSAFETY is a national nonprofit agency stressing safe police pursuits. It used Johnny Kallmeyer's 2007 Hamilton County death to develop a Checkpoint Avoidance Policy it wants police to use at DUI checkpoints to avoid pursuits that can injure or kill. Kallmeyer is featured in one of the organization's public service announcements.
Recent local cases
Lockland police Officer Brandon Gehring was on Interstate 75 in April throwing out "stop sticks" to try to stop a car speeding away from police when a vehicle driven by a West Chest officer struck Gehring. He nearly died and was off for almost six months before returning to work in October.
In 2007, Cincinnati police Sgt. Bryce Bezdek was putting "stop sticks" on I-75 during a November 2007 chase when he was struck, suffering a broken neck and brain injuries. He recovered enough to walk but no longer is a police officer.