Six months after the Department of Public Safety released a pursuit policy rough draft that effectively prohibits officers in patrol vehicles from chasing suspects, DPS Interim Director Tom Hicks said he still must reconcile his concerns about what he views as overly restrictive language before moving forward with a final draft in the next two weeks.
DPS decided to create a pursuit policy — the first ever for the department — in October 2003, three months after an officer in a patrol vehicle drove on a sidewalk and struck a fleeing suspect riding a bicycle.
The policy rough draft, which hasn’t changed since it was first released at a Public Safety Advisory Group meeting in early June, prohibits all pursuits in a motorized vehicle.
Hicks said Friday he will probably change some of the draft’s language because some of it is too restrictive, but was hoping to get a final draft assembled within two weeks. If he does make those changes, he will take the new language to PSAG in January for public input and send it to University General Counsel Melinda Grier’s office for legal advice, he said.
“Right now, the real hanging point is we have a statement that says DPS officers will only pursue persons who have committed or whom the officer has probable cause to believe have committed a crime,” Hicks said. “The thing that I’m trying to clarify in my mind is, do we want to revise the wording to say something like ‘or have reasonable suspicions to have committed a crime.’”
As an example, Hicks said a DPS officer who sees a suspect pop up from behind a bicycle rack late at night and take off running has a
“reasonable suspicion,” but not “probable cause.”
Hicks also said he is unsure whether to change the language of the clause to allow officers to pursue suspects who commit a violation such as smoking marijuana. The draft also prohibits officers from using motorized vehicle to block another vehicle, but Hicks said there may be situations where that should be allowed. Lastly, Hicks said he’d like the policy to allow officers in patrol vehicles to follow, not pursue, suspects driving a motorized vehicle in order to gather vehicle information.
“The way this is written now, even that would be questionable whether the officer would have that discretion, and I have a little bit of an issue with that, and I need to resolve it before we finalize this,” Hicks said. “It could be, and probably will be, that the officer shall receive approval of some sort to initiate that.”
The policy has been in the works for more than a year, Hicks said, adding that he hopes to get a final draft instituted by February.
Hicks said there have been no DPS pursuits since the July 2003 officer-suspect collision. Since that time, DPS officers have been operating under a verbal directive stating that pursuits won’t be initiated in a motorized vehicle, while allowing bicycle pursuits, Hicks said.

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