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In movies, police car chases are dramatic and exciting. In real life, they’re pointless and deadly.
This could be nowhere more clear than in Texas under the US state’s anti-migrant program called “Operation Lone Star,” which pressures law enforcement to pursue at high speeds cars thought to contain migrants. A new report shows a third of these chases involve speeds of more than 100 miles per hour (161 kph), and one was clocked at 180 miles per hour (290 kph).
The fatal result of people driving so recklessly is hardly surprising. In the first 29 months of the state initiative, dangerous chases have killed at least 74 people and injured at least 189. Along with drivers and passengers, bystanders have also been among the dead, including a seven-year-old girl out to get ice cream with her grandmother.
These tragedies are so senseless and avoidable. But such are the demands and expectations created by Operation Lone Star that these car chases keep happening.
We’ve talked about Operation Lone Star before in this newsletter and how it functions as a shadow system of racialized border control.
The multifaceted program of border militarization has cost Texas residents as much as US$ 10 billion and is rife with human rights violations. It has drawn international condemnation for deploying razor wire and buoys with circular saws around and in the Rio Grande on the border with Mexico.
It’s also made law enforcement agencies very visible, with trucks and uniformed and armed personnel alongside roadways and in cities and towns. These are the agencies that engage in vehicle chases and other risky maneuvers on a daily basis.
There is no evidence, by the way, the state-orchestrated chaos of Operation Lone Star is making any measurable progress in its stated goals to “deter migration” and thwart cartels involved in drug trafficking and people smuggling. The abusive and fatal pointlessness of the car chases, and all the rest of it, is total.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think Texas officials should get their heads out of Hollywood. Real life is not an action movie. Drop the car chases, folks. Public safety should come first.
