Another tool helps police stay sharp

WASILLA — At around 1:30 a.m., police spot the stolen minivan with a reckless driver at Parks Highway near the Palmer Wasilla Highway.

Wasilla Police Officer Don Ridge tries to pull it over but the driver steps on the gas, accelerating up to 90 miles per hour. He’s trying to run. But he doesn’t count on Officer Jentry Crain and his newest weapon.

Crain joins the pursuit. He pulls up alongside the minivan. When the time is right, at about Parks Highway and Church Road, he hits a button in his car, sending a strip of spikes under the minivan. Crain slows down slightly. The minivan’s rear tires run over the spikes.

And that, as they say, is that.

“A half mile later he was done,” Crain said.

The chase in question happened May 1. The police press release doesn’t name the suspect and Crain, since he wasn’t the arresting officer, didn’t know the driver’s name offhand. But the suspect was 18 and wound up in jail, charged with vehicle theft, reckless endangerment, eluding arrest and driving without a license. He had also been wanted on a warrant for escape.

Though Wasilla police has had these air-powered spike strip machines for months now, it was their first chance to use them in anything but a training exercise. The machines are new enough, Crain said, that supervisors have to approve their use.

Still, he said, he’s sold on their effectiveness. “It’s another tool that can prevent the hazards that pursuits can put the public into.”

Driving is probably the most dangerous thing a police officer does on a daily basis. And car chases are exponentially more dangerous.

So when the company that makes the spike strips asked the Wasilla Police Department if it wanted to test the systems to show how they performed in cold weather, the department agreed. The company has so far loaned police five of the units. They’re mounted in the “push bars” that cover the grills of police cars.

The unit slopes down on one side. Crain’s is lower on the passenger side, but other units slope to the driver’s side. The strip is made out of flexible fiberglass. When deployed, the spikes end up approximately eight feet from the edge of the police car. The spikes are specially designed with hollow quills inside that stay in the criminal’s tires to make sure air comes out slowly, thus avoiding unpredictable blowouts.

Crain said having the spikes eight feet from his car gives him a bit of room for error and also ensures the spikes will go where they need to.

He said the car-mounted spike strips are greatly preferable to the previous option — hand-deployed spike strips officers tossed or rolled out onto the road.

Using those hand-deployed strips, Crain said, officers have to guess where the bad guy is headed.

Sgt. Rick Manrique said he always tried to go for a choke point.

“The far end of a bridge, an underpass or overpass. Something where I can deploy it and I’ve got concrete,” to duck behind, Manrique said.

Still, Crain noted, no matter where an officer chooses to use those spike strips, it’s not as safe as being inside a car.

“No matter how safe of a location you get, you’re still going to be exposing yourself,” Crain said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.