August 21, 2020
By: Dwayne Page
What’s the best means of stopping a fleeing suspect or felon in a vehicle during a high speed law enforcement pursuit?
Fifth District County Commissioner Jerry Adcock believes “Stop Sticks” may be the answer. A stop stick is a tire deflation device for high speed pursuits.
During Thursday night’s “Committee of the Whole” meeting of the County Commission, Adcock proposed the county purchasing 20 stop sticks for the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department which would cost around $11,000.
Adcock referenced a pursuit just a month ago in which a Rock Island man led Warren County deputies on a pursuit from McMinnville to near Smithville before being forced off the road. Had the local Sheriff’s Department had stop sticks, the suspect may have been intercepted earlier.
Along with the stop sticks, Adcock proposed purchasing dash mounted radar units for county patrol cars for better enforcement of speed limits on county roads. Adcock said up to 20 cars could be equipped with radar devices for around $2,500 each.
Adcock said stop sticks and radar units are needed in the interest of public safety. The purchase could be made from an appropriation out of the county’s capital projects fund.
Sheriff Patrick Ray said while the stop sticks would be useful there could be problems enforcing speed limits even with radar units because so many county roads do not have authorized posted speed limits by the county commission and others are posted with unauthorized signs. Under state law, if a county road is not posted, the speed limit is 55 miles per hour.
“Some signs are posted that were not approved by the county commission. Its where somebody just put up a homemade sign. In some cases the signs even look like the real thing but they are no good and can’t be enforced,” he said.
“I know of a case once where someone was pulled over for violating a speed limit on a county road which turned into a drug case. Their attorney went back and checked and the posted speed limit never was voted on by the county commission. They (officers) lost that case because it wasn’t a good stop”.
Given the choice of one or the other, Sheriff Ray said he would prefer the stop sticks over the radar units.
“It’s a whole lot cheaper to buy stop sticks if we were to get in a pursuit and then they crashed into somebody resulting in a lawsuit. Right now we have no way to stop them once we get after them. A few months ago we chased one through three counties trying to get him to stop. What you see on TV, patrol cars knocking people off the road, there is liability that goes with that. We can’t just go out and do pit maneuvers on somebody because we are not trained to do that. There is a certain way to safely knock someone off the road. There have been times when we have done it but we carry that liability when we do it. Most departments go with stop sticks. It’s a lot cheaper and they don’t blow out tires, when they run over them. Its a slow release of air from the tires but they will have to stop or run on rims,” said Sheriff Ray.
No action has been taken.