Officers were chasing motorist at time of deadly crash, LAPD report says

A Los Angeles police report shows that a department cruiser was recently pursuing a motorist at a high speed when the fleeing vehicle collided with another car, killing two people inside, contradicting the department’s official account that the chase had ended before the deadly collision.

Janisha Harris, 35, and Jamarea Keyes, 38, were on their way home from work on the morning of Aug. 19 when the speeding motorist ran a red light at Manchester Avenue and South Broadway in South Los Angeles and slammed into the side of their Black BMW, killing the two and triggering a multi-vehicle collision.

In the wake of the collision, a police spokesman insisted that officers were not pursuing the vehicle at the time of the crash.

But the police report released this week to the family of those deceased states otherwise. It describes how two officers from the department’s 77th Street Station first spotted and then pursued the speeding motorist.

“It was determined that 77th Patrol Unit 12A51 was in pursuit of the vehicle at the time of the crash,” according to the report written by Officer K. Sander. The report was written the day of the deadly crash.

“The initial reports by the LAPD were there was no high-speed pursuit, but this report clearly shows they were engaged in pursuit at the time of the collision,” said Jasmine Mines, attorney for the victims’ families. “The LAPD is not allowed by its policies to conduct high-speed pursuits for minor infractions, but that is what seems to have happened here.”

Speaking at a news conference outside the Los Angeles Police Department’s 77th Street Station, Mines and the victim’s families on Friday called for an independent probe by the attorney general into the incident.

LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz said “the initial statement to media stated officers were not in pursuit. After further review, it was determined that the officers had gone in pursuit for 15 seconds. They shut down the pursuit before the collision. The suspect continued through a full phased red light striking the victims.”

Mines and the victims’ families demanded that the department release footage from the police car camera system to allow the public to see exactly what officers did that morning after spotting the speeding car.

“I would like that the LAPD ... stop chasing people on the street,” said Tanya Keyes, Jamarea Keyes’ widow. He left behind four children, while Harris left behind a son and daughter.

According to the police report, the investigation team interviewed both of the officers involved in the pursuit. The driver who fled authorities was determined to be under the influence of cannabis and subsequently booked on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter.

The investigator said in his report that the driver, while under the influence, had failed to stop at a red light, causing a deadly collision with a car coming across the junction at Broadway.

The LAPD traffic investigator noted that “Vehicle 1/Party 1 was trying to evade police, and in doing so was driving in a wanton disregard for public safety,” resulting in the fatalities. The report noted that a review of the police cruiser’s car video showed the suspect while trying to evade police went through a stop sign and two red lights at high speed.

Mines said the report accuses suspect Matthew Smith, the fleeing driver, of wanting to disregard public safety. “But it seems the officers here in their actions also had disregard for public safety,” he said.

A Los Angeles County grand jury in 2017 found that police agencies need to take into account the likelihood of a dangerous collision compared with the chances of catching a suspect. Two-thirds of the 421 police pursuits that took place in the 12-month period beginning in October 2015 resulted in a suspect’s capture, but about 17% of those pursuits resulted in a collision, the grand jury’s report said.

During this same period, three fleeing drivers were killed and 45 people were injured, including suspects, their passengers or officers, the report found.

The grand jury cited analyses by the Los Angeles Times in 2015 showing that LAPD car chases have led to bystander injuries and deaths at a higher rate than pursuits in the rest of the state.