OLYMPIA, Wash. – After George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020, an outpouring of racial justice protests led to several policy wins for advocates in Washington state. One of those victories was nullified on Thursday.
During the 2021 state legislative session, a bill limiting police pursuits was signed into law by Governor Jay Inslee (D). Police accountability advocates framed the policy as an enhancement to public safety.
Before the bill was signed into law, police could engage in vehicular pursuits at their own discretion. According to the US Justice Department data, police pursuits killed about a person a day from 1996 to 2015, sparking concerns from advocates that officers were endangering the public by unnecessarily chasing suspects.
The law, which was supported by the Washington Black Lives Matter Alliance and ACLU, banned police pursuits except in the case of a suspect creating an immediate danger to others or officers having probable cause to believe someone committed a serious crime.
However, the law has been slowly whittled-down. In 2023, the language was changed to allow police to pursue suspects who they had a reasonable suspicion of having committed a serious crime, a lower legal threshold than probable cause.
On Thursday, an initiative approved by the Washington legislature in March which scraps the 2021 law completely went into effect. In total, the limitations on police pursuits lasted 2 years, ten months and 12 days.
While some laws enacted by the Evergreen State in response to racial justice protests remain on the books, it is clear that the political realities which informed a slew of police accountability measures in 2021 are no longer as pertinent to lawmakers.
