Cop Cruiser Crashes: You Pay The Cost When Local Police Cause Accidents

By Joce Sterman
WJLA.com
Dec. 08, 2014

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WASHINGTON (WJLA) – They’re sworn to serve and protect. But police officers are not immune to causing harm, especially behind the wheel. An ABC7 I-Team investigation discovered police officers in the D.C. area have been found at fault in hundreds of accidents, causing deaths, injuries and thousands of dollars in damages.

The ABC7 I-Team obtained databases from six jurisdictions, looking at accident reports from Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland, as well as Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties in Virginia. We crunched the numbers and discovered that since 2010, there have been more than 2,300 at-fault accidents in those counties.

Among those reports, we found what the departments classified as “improper backing” as the leading cause of accidents where police officers were to blame. “Driver inattention” and “failure to maintain control” were also large contributors to departmental accidents that were later deemed preventable.

The accidents detailed in hundreds of reports range from minor incidents, like a 2014 Prince William County police crash in which the officer sideswiped a car after looking down at a cellphone, to more serious ones, like a 2012 incident involving an Arlington County officer. In that case, an officer assisting with a foot chase drove his vehicle down a steep embankment, injuring himself and causing approximately more than $11,000 in damages to his cruiser.

Some of the accidents also resulted in injuries, not just to officers, but also members of the public. In Montgomery County, which supplied the most detailed and comprehensive records, eight civilians have been injured since 2010 in police-involved accidents in which the officer was classified as responsible. Those incidents include a 2013 accident in which a person was hurt after being struck by an officer who didn’t see them walking through a parking garage.

The video that details that last seconds of Ashley McIntosh’s life has logged more than 240,000 views on YouTube. But for the Fairfax County woman’s mother, Cindy Colasanto, seeing it just once was enough.