Measuring the Costs and Benefits Associated With Vehicle Pursuit Policies in Roanoke City and Roanoke County, VA

Overview

To assess the costs and benefits of adopting more restrictive vehicle pursuit policies, the Policing Project partnered with two neighboring Virginia policing agencies: the Roanoke City Police Department and the Roanoke County Police Department. The City and County pursuit policies evolved differently over time. This study compares how outcomes changed in the two jurisdictions before and after their policies went into effect.

Read the full report: *Measuring the Costs and Benefits Associated With Vehicle Pursuit Policies in Roanoke City and Roanoke County, VA*
*Read the practitioner report:* *Measuring the Costs and Benefits Associated With Vehicle Pursuit Policies in Roanoke City and Roanoke County, VA - Practitioner Version*

Key Takeaways

1). Our study finds that the Roanoke County Police Department’s decision to adopt a more restrictive vehicle pursuit policy reduced the costs associated with pursuits. Vehicle pursuits became shorter, and thus safer, under the more restrictive policy.

2). We find that in Roanoke City, the adoption of the most restrictive policy did not lead to shorter pursuits, but it did drastically reduce the number of pursuits, especially for traffic related offenses.

3). In neither case was there evidence that the reduced likelihood of pursuit caused an increase in criminal activity.