High-speed chases are recognized by law enforcement as one of the most dangerous routine aspects of the job.

We put an emphasis on “routine,” which confirms that these chases are not rare occurrences, although in truth, they should be.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, police across the country initiate 186 pursuits each day, about eight per hour.

The data show that 20% to 40% of these pursuits end in a crash of some kind. As many as 42% of these crashes result in injuries or deaths among innocent bystanders.

Every day, innocent people are hurt or killed as a result of police pursuits.

International Association of Chiefs of Police tracking shows that 80% to 91% of these pursuits are initiated over nonviolent offenses, most commonly traffic violations, such as speeding or expired registration, minor property crimes or suspected stolen vehicles.

Law enforcement often justifies these pursuits by saying they are a matter of public safety. They are right, but not in the way they intend.

The statistics prove over and over again that these pursuits endanger innocent people far more than they protect them.

Why does this continue to happen? One reason is that pursuit policies are ambiguous, leaving far too much to the individual officer’s discretion in making those decisions.

In fact, in the aftermath of a civilian death during a pursuit in downtown Columbus, The Dispatch filed open records requests with all area law enforcement agencies, requesting their pursuit policies. Mississippi Highway Patrol sent us the pages of its handbook with the entire pages redacted. We appealed to the Mississippi Ethics Commission in an effort to educate the public on when and why pursuits are initiated. MEC sided with MHP.

There is also a psychological component in play here.

The question of why police officers repeatedly initiate high-speed chases over minor infractions is a subject of intense study in criminology and police psychology.

When a driver flees, it triggers a primitive, hardwired human response in the officer: the fight-or-flight mechanism. Adrenaline outweighs sound judgment in many cases.

There is also one of the basic elements of policing involved here. It’s an officer’s job to catch the bad guy. When officers don’t, the bad guy wins.

When a driver flees a minor infraction, officers almost always default to a common assumption: The suspect must be hiding a more serious offense. As the data show, that’s not usually the case.

Recognizing these psychological realities, organizations like the Police Executive Research Forum have heavily pushed to remove officer discretion entirely. Because human psychology cannot reliably override these drives, modern best practices dictate that if the suspect is not verified to have committed an imminent, violent felony, the policy should dictate that the officer cannot chase. That’s a short, clear policy that all of our law enforcement agencies should embrace. We have advocated for that policy repeatedly and will continue to do so.

In most cases, those who flee can be detained later under far safer circumstances. That’s good for the officer, the suspect and the general public.

There are times when police pursue violent criminals who are an imminent danger to the community. In those cases, pursuits are justified. While we support the necessity of those pursuits, local accounts of pursuits that met the threshold of imminent danger are extremely rare.

A simple, reasonable no-chase policy would prevent injuries and deaths to the innocent, which we can presume our law enforcement agencies support.

It begs the question: Why not make it official policy?

We suspect the public would be safer as a result.

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.