The GSP’s heavy reliance on PITs to end chases has contributed to Georgia having the highest death rate in police pursuits of any state in the country in recent years, according to an AJC analysis of federal crash data, U.S. Census population estimates and GSP pursuit data.

GSP says suspects who flee, not troopers enforcing the law, cause the pursuit. Any injuries or deaths that result would not happen if those breaking the law did not flee, GSP says.

Of the 66 deaths stemming from GSP pursuits during the five-year period, 19 resulted from PITs, the AJC’s analysis found. Those killed from PITs included nine passengers.

Among those killed was a 12-year-old boy who was partially ejected from an SUV that GSP forced off the road with a PIT maneuver that occurred at 87 mph; a 23-year-old man who was a passenger in a car the GSP forced off the road at 126 mph, causing it to strike a tree; and a pair of young men — ages 18 and 22 — involved in a high-speed chase in which a trooper conducted a PIT at 96 mph along I-20 in Atlanta, according to GSP crash investigation records.

Most pursuits by GSP, including those that involve PITs and those that result in deaths and injuries, begin over traffic infractions.

GSP has no cap on the speed at which a trooper can PIT someone, it doesn’t require involvement of a supervisor in critical decisions, and it doesn’t prohibit PITs when passengers — even children — are in the fleeing suspect’s car. The agency also allows chases when the suspect’s identity is known to police and the suspect could be captured later.

The agency’s loose pursuit policy is out of step with best practices from other law enforcement agencies, the AJC found, effectively allowing troopers to pursue and PIT almost anyone who is fleeing, under any circumstances.

“There’s a bunch of things that take place in that kind of environment,” said Michael A. Pfeiffer, the innovation manager for the New Orleans Police Department who helped revamp the agency’s pursuit policy to make it more restrictive. “If there’s a lot of pursuits happening, if there’s a lot of PIT maneuvers happening, there’s going to be a lot more injuries and deaths and property damage associated with these activities.”

The AJC sent Georgia State Patrol Col. Billy Hitchens a detailed list of findings about its investigation of GSP’s use of PIT maneuvers at high speeds. Hitchens declined an interview request, as he has throughout the AJC’s investigation of GSP pursuits. The AJC reached out to the troopers mentioned in this story and a spokesperson said the agency could not participate in an interview.

An agency spokeswoman referred reporters to a written statement from July before the publication of the first installment of the AJC’s investigation.

In that earlier statement, GSP spokesman Capt. Michael Burns said the agency’s pursuit policy is “proportionally responsive” to the rise of crime on the roadways, including street racing, aggressive driving and speeding. (Read the full response here.)

“Every life is precious, and any life lost during the course of ensuring public safety is tragic and heartbreaking,” he said. “The Department of Public Safety protects Georgians by ensuring our members use good judgment and act within the bounds of policy and law.”

An expired tag, a violent end

Don Youmans has seen the GSP dashcam video of his daughter’s SUV colliding with the concrete barrier that day in January 2023, tumbling over and over on Ga. 204 outside Savannah. He said he knows his daughter was not blameless, but her last moments are tough to ponder.

“It’s rough to take in,” he said. “It really is.”

Credit: Courtesy of Padgett's family

Credit: Courtesy of Padgett's family

Youmans said he had reported to authorities a day or two before the incident that Padgett was missing. Her death triggered an internal affairs investigation by the GSP, a standard procedure after pursuits that involve death or serious injury.

The pursuit had started after Chatham County police officers spotted Padgett’s expired tag on her white Nissan.

After the officer signaled to Padgett to pull over, she drove away, cutting through someone’s yard. The officer did not pursue. The policy of Chatham County police prohibits chasing a driver for traffic violations, nonviolent felonies or if the driver’s or vehicle’s “pertinent information” is known and there is no immediate need to make an arrest.

Unlike the Chatham County officer, the troopers had no idea who was driving the Nissan or why the original stop was attempted. The troopers listened to Chatham County’s radio channel long enough to learn that the driver had fled and in which direction. The troopers then switched back to a GSP channel, according to dashcam audio.

“Right there, go, go, go, go, go, go,” said Montano, the field training officer, who pointed his finger as he spotted the white Nissan, GSP dashcam video shows. “Hit the lights and siren. Now turn around. Alright, we just picked it up. We’re going to try to get a stop. Go. Go.”

The pursuit lasted less than two minutes and would far exceed the 55 mph speed limit by the time the cadet would execute the PIT. GSP’s internal affairs and crash reconstruction teams made no mention of the speed at which the PIT occurred in either of their investigative reports. An AJC analysis based on dashcam footage estimated the PIT occurred at approximately 80 mph.

Investigators concluded the PIT was within GSP policy. Both Nusall, the cadet-in-training, and his training instructor were exonerated as part of a standard internal affairs review, according to the investigative file. GSP policy allowed them to do what the Chatham officers couldn’t: Carry out a deadly PIT at a high-speed in an episode that started over an expired registration.

Credit: Georgia State Patrol

Credit: Georgia State Patrol

The PIT was Nusall’s first of his career outside of a training environment, records show. The cadet’s actions during the maneuver forced Padgett’s SUV toward the center concrete median and into a catastrophic roll, rather than off to the right side of the road as intended, records show. Investigators noted this in their report.

“Cadet Nusall’s actions were deemed to be a PIT; however, the push bumper affixed to the front of the patrol vehicle had slipped off of the Nissan which caused the driver to sway and lose control of her Nissan,” the report said.

Padgett left behind an adult daughter and two grandchildren. She also had a son who is now 14.

He is being raised by Don Youmans and his wife at the family’s home in a wooded area of Liberty County, about 30 minutes from the roadway where Padgett died. Youmans vividly remembers a pair of troopers approaching their home after the crash and explaining that his daughter was dead.

Youmans said he respects law enforcement and the job they do, but he wonders if the troopers had to PIT his daughter’s SUV that day, why they couldn’t have waited for a stretch of road without such an obvious hazard as a concrete barrier.

“If they would have waited another 30 seconds, a little bit longer, the wall wouldn’t have been there to run her into,” he said.

Youmans said his daughter had struggled with addiction for years and had previous brushes with the law. He said he filed the missing persons report the day or two before Aimee’s death because he was worried when she didn’t return home. She had been staying with him and his wife for a period before her death. Nearly two years later, he said, the way his daughter died still troubles him.

“I’m still upset,” he said. “I think about it all the time.”

Deadly force at 100 mph

The GSP’s policy manual says the PIT should be a trooper’s last resort to bring a chase to an end. Yet the agency has used PITs more than any other pursuit termination tactic, records show. Other tactics police can use include tire deflation devices, boxing in a fleeing car by surrounding it with patrol cruisers and calling off the chase.

The PIT maneuver accounts for the most damage among all of GSP’s pursuit termination tactics. Roughly half of all GSP pursuits from 2019 through 2023 that resulted in a crash involved a PIT maneuver, according to the AJC’s analysis.

“A driver initiates a pursuit by failing to comply with the officer’s lawful demand and fleeing from the intended traffic stop,” GSP’s spokesman Burns said in the July statement to the AJC. “The importance of the driver’s responsibility to stop for law enforcement cannot be overlooked or over-emphasized.”

A trooper’s decisions in each pursuit are reviewed by a group of supervisors who document their findings in a pursuit critique report.

Credit: Georgia State Patrol

Credit: Georgia State Patrol

The post-pursuit assessments are typically about seven pages long and capture details about the chase through a series of standardized questions. They include whether a PIT was conducted, the estimated distance traveled and time spent during the pursuit.

The form does not ask troopers to document or evaluate speed during the pursuit.

To determine the average speeds for chases, the AJC obtained more than 5,600 pursuit critique reports from the GSP covering 2019 to 2023 as part of an open records request. Reporters were able to analyze the time and distance of about 4,500 of these pursuit critique reports that had complete information. That analysis included approximately 2,000 chases with PITs during the five-year period.

Reporters determined the average speed during these pursuits by dividing the distance by time as documented in the critiques. These calculations approximate average speed over the course of an entire pursuit, not the speed at which a PIT was conducted.

The average distance for pursuits was 5 miles. The typical average speed was 71 mph, including chases that involved a PIT. The AJC’s review found 30% of PITs occurred in chases that took place with average speeds of 75 mph or higher. And in 272 chases involving a PIT, about 13% of all PITs, the average speed was 100 mph or higher.

The AJC conducted its analysis of speeds during pursuits because the GSP does not systematically track the average speed of the pursuit or the speed at the moment of impact during a PIT as part of its standard pursuit review process.

Some pursuits that ended in death or injury prompted GSP’s crash reconstruction teams to calculate the speed at the time the PIT was performed as part of their investigation. These calculations were sometimes documented in crash investigation reports and internal affairs files. In a handful of cases, the AJC analyzed dashcam footage to determine the approximate speed at the moment a trooper performed a PIT.

The AJC identified 19 deaths involving PIT maneuvers from 2019 through 2023, all of them occurring during high-speed chases. At least 14 deaths resulted from PITs conducted at high speeds that ranged from 80 mph to 126 mph, according to the AJC’s review.

At least 750 people were injured during pursuits in which a PIT was conducted, according to GSP data, including 70 who suffered serious injuries.

Geoff Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina, has studied police pursuits for more than 30 years. He said most departments limit PITs to speeds of about 35 or 40 mph. It’s hard to comprehend or justify doing a PIT at 75 or 100 mph, he said.

“Those are deadly force, and unless deadly force is justified, there is no way to justify a PIT maneuver at that speed,” he said.

Loose PIT policy

GSP is an outlier among state police agencies when it comes to PITs and the lack of rules to curtail them. GSP draws no distinction between PIT maneuvers performed at 30 mph and those performed above 100 mph, those performed in neighborhoods and those on highways, or those performed against people suspected of violent felonies and those suspected of non-moving traffic violations.

The AJC examined pursuit policies for 44 state police agencies. Five state law enforcement agencies either denied the AJC’s records requests or hadn’t responded by deadline. The AJC did not request a policy from Hawaii, which has no statewide highway patrol agency.

The pursuit policies in Texas and Arkansas are the two that permit broad use of the PIT similar to GSP. Other state police agencies limit how and when the PIT can be used in ways GSP does not, the AJC found. Some agencies provided the AJC with heavily redacted policies.

Credit: Ga. State Patrol

Credit: Ga. State Patrol

The policies of 10 state police agencies reviewed by the AJC prohibit chases over traffic infractions, which account for 66% of GSP chases involving the PIT. At least three states don’t allow troopers to use the PIT at all. More commonly, state police agencies follow policies that restrict or discourage PIT use at high speeds and/or require officers to seek supervisor authorization before conducting a PIT. The AJC found such restrictions in 21 policies in other states.

One belongs to the Minnesota State Patrol, which prohibits troopers from using the PIT maneuver at speeds above 40 mph, so just 9% of their pursuits in 2023 made use of the tactic. From 2021 to 2023, none of the agency’s PIT maneuvers resulted in death or serious injury, according to data MSP publishes online.

MSP called off more than half of its chases, usually at the officer’s discretion. Minnesota troopers are taught that the immediate apprehension of traffic violators is rarely worth the possibility of death or serious injury that can result from continuing a pursuit, MSP Capt. Brian Cheney said.

Credit: File

Credit: File

Cheney said chasing people at high speeds, in most situations, is often counterproductive and unsafe.

“Are we just fuel behind that rocket?” he said, adding: “We chase, they run.”

Instead, he wants his troopers to de-escalate pursuits so the fleeing driver will eventually slow down, which is their ultimate goal. MSP coordinates between its ground units and its aviation division to track fleeing motorists from the air. It’s been an effective strategy to catch those who flee, Cheney said.

“(The fleeing driver) doesn’t know they’re up there, so eventually, they end up either slowing down, stopping, maybe that subject flees on foot and then the flight officers track that person,” Cheney said.

It’s one of many circumstances in which troopers in other states would disengage and call off the chase, but GSP rarely does.

The GSP called off just 17% of chases over the five years that the AJC analyzed, most commonly because the trooper lost sight of the vehicle.

Troopers and supervisors in Tennessee used their discretion to discontinue at least 1 in 3 chases they documented in 2022, according to data obtained from the state’s highway patrol. By comparison, the latest available data from South Carolina for 2023 shows the agency called off 27% of chases.

Just 15% of South Carolina troopers’ pursuits resulted in a crash that year, while half of GSP’s chases ended in a crash.

“The Georgia Department of Public Safety takes significant steps to control our Trooper’s/MCOs actions during pursuits,” GSP’s Capt. Burns said in the July statement to the AJC. “We cannot, however, control the actions of criminals who flagrantly choose to violate the law, flee from our officers, and put the public at risk.”

‘Never without risk’

Experts across the country say the higher the speed, the higher the risk in police chases. That is especially true when it comes to conducting PIT maneuvers.

The Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF, brought together a group of chiefs and pursuit experts to conduct a national review of police chases. It published a 160-page report in September 2023 that included recommendations for how police agencies can make pursuits safer.

The group struggled to reach consensus on recommendations for PIT maneuvers because there was not enough research to say whether using the tactic was safe at all, according to the report prepared in conjunction with the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

The group concluded that PITs can create dangers for all involved, including officers, passengers and bystanders.

“These risks increase under certain conditions, such as when the maneuver is conducted at high speeds or in crowded locations,” the report said.

When Wexler, PERF’s director, was told of the AJC’s findings about the GSP’s loose policy that allows troopers to PIT at any speed, sometimes conducting PITs in excess of 100 mph, he expressed surprise.

“That’s crazy,” said Wexler, later adding: “When people hear about doing the PIT at 100 mph and they see what happens, they are stunned that someone would think that’s going to be safe. Putting a car out of control at 100 mph; you have to ask yourself, ‘What are they thinking when they do this?’”

In the group’s report, PERF said the risks with PITs are so high that many agencies do not train officers on the maneuver and they prohibit the tactic. The report noted recent research has shown that vehicles with electronic stability control technology can behave less predictably than other vehicles when a PIT has been executed on them.

Given all the risks associated with PITs, the working group recommended agencies that allow PITs should outline a narrowly defined set of circumstances in which they are appropriate. They should implement training for all the factors associated with PITs, and supervisors should play a significant role in the decision-making process.

GSP’s policy doesn’t include many of the standards put forth by PERF’s findings.

The result: Just as GSP allows its officers to use the PIT maneuver at any speed, it also allows the maneuver to be performed virtually anywhere, including in residential areas, on high-traffic roadways and in places with blind turns or limited visibility.

GSP’s comment to the AJC’s findings did not address these issues.

“DPS policy speaks for itself,” said patrol spokesperson Capt. Crystal Zion in an emailed statement to the AJC for this story. She was referencing the Department of Public Safety policy that guides the GSP.

The PERF report noted that one of the most important factors to consider before performing a PIT is the suspect’s speed, while also noting there’s a lack of research to determine at what speed they can be deemed reliably safe.

“Importantly, despite its name, the PIT maneuver is neither precise nor predictable and is never without risk,” the report said.

A ‘successful’ PIT

Because the state patrol’s policy allows its troopers near full discretion in determining if a PIT is an appropriate way to end a pursuit, the agency’s review process almost never finds fault with a trooper’s decision to PIT, no matter the speed or outcome of the maneuver, according to the AJC’s analysis of five years of pursuit critiques and internal affairs reports.

Of the 19 deaths associated with PITs in that span, nine of those were passengers. And in cases where there was a fatal PIT, troopers rarely faced disciplinary action, according to an analysis of internal affairs reports and pursuits critiques.

Credit: Family photo

Credit: Family photo

Toni Franklin still struggles to understand Trooper David Peterson’s decision to PIT a car that was carrying two children as passengers, including her 12-year-old son, Le’Den Boykins.

“We don’t have answers,” she said. “I don’t have any answers.”

The pursuit grew out of a traffic stop after Peterson spotted a speeding sedan around 1 a.m. Sept. 10, 2021. Peterson approached driver Charlie Moore’s window and demanded to see his license. He said he noticed a strong smell of alcohol coming from inside the car and saw Moore’s bloodshot eyes. Moore’s teenage son was in the front seat, while Le’Den was in the back seat. Peterson later said he didn’t get a good look at the front seat passenger and didn’t notice a passenger in the back seat at all.

“He was only able to tell that the person (in the front seat) looked large in size, like an adult,” an investigator wrote in an internal affairs report after the incident. “TPR Peterson was unable to clearly see if anyone was in the backseat see (sic) due to the window tint on the Kia. At no time did TPR Peterson see any movement or anything that looked like a person in the back seat.”

After an argument on the side of the road, Peterson called for backup, and three Paulding deputies arrived. After one of the deputies smashed Moore’s window to try to physically remove him from the SUV, Moore drove away. All four officers ran to their respective cruisers, and the pursuit began.

The pursuit sped through Paulding County, at times reaching speeds in excess of 95 mph. Video footage from the Paulding deputies’ dashboard cameras shows both Moore’s and Peterson’s cars driving fast through residential areas, down side streets and onto the main road. A Paulding dispatcher noted that there were children in the car, according to dispatch recordings.

“Let GSP know. They are probably unaware,” one deputy said into his radio.

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com

As the speed increased, the deputies began coordinating a plan to box the car in to slow it down. That would require three patrol vehicles to surround the fleeing car and force it to slow down.

Trooper Peterson was not communicating with the deputies during the pursuit. His radio was tuned to a different frequency.

A county dispatcher dialed GSP’s dispatcher on the phone to try to restore communication and alert GSP to the presence of children in the fleeing car.

“Does he know there are kids in the vehicle?” the Paulding dispatcher asked. “We’ve got the driver on the phone.”

“Um, no he does not,” a GSP dispatcher replied.

As the chase entered a construction zone along a county highway, speeds exceeded 100 mph, records show. Before anyone could tell him not to, Peterson performed a PIT maneuver, sending the SUV down an embankment into a ditch along a dark stretch of Ga. 92. Moore’s car rolled and Le’Den was killed when he was ejected from the car.

“PIT successful,” Peterson said into his radio. It was his second pursuit in his career as a trooper. Peterson had been with the state patrol for about two years, state records show.

In a pursuit critique, Peterson’s supervisor determined his actions were mostly aligned with the agency’s policy. He received a coaching session for approaching the side of a vehicle of which he could not see the rear seat, not fully communicating his actions during a pursuit and stating that an observed traffic violation, rather than a suspicious driver, was the reason for the stop.

“Trooper Peterson demonstrated good driving and decision-making skills throughout the pursuit,” a pursuit critique document said.

Moore pleaded guilty last year to first-degree vehicular homicide and aggravated assault. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Franklin said others should be held accountable. She and Le’Den’s father, Anthony Boykins, have filed a federal lawsuit against Peterson and the GSP’s parent agency, the Department of Public Safety. Attorneys for the state were in court Monday arguing a motion to have the case dismissed, but as of Thursday no decision had been made.

Franklin blames the officers for escalating the situation and causing her son’s death. She thinks they all should have been fired and faced charges.

“I feel like it didn’t have to be escalated to a point of performing a PIT maneuver on a minor traffic violation,” she said, adding: “So it’s a lot of things that I felt like it didn’t have to happen. It could have been avoided.”