You know what phrasing I'm really coming to hate?

[conuly]

Right up there with "officer-involved shooting" and "mistakes were made"?

"So-and-so led police on a chase."

Have you ever heard that it takes two to tangle? Yeah, well, likewise it takes two to have a chase. You can't "lead police on a chase" unless the police first decide to chase you. Admittedly, in this case there may not have been much chance of averting disaster if the teen was already driving erratically when spotted, but that exact same phrasing is used when the driver's initial crime is "bad taillight" or anything else that could be just as easily handled by sending a ticket to their house. I mean, if you have their plates, why would you chase them for something stupid? Just get their address, send them a ticket, go eat a donut and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

The officer attempted to pull the vehicle over and a pursuit followed, Woodland police said.

No, the officer attempted to pull the vehicle over and then chose to pursue the car when the driver failed to stop. (Note: No comments about the passive voice. These aren't passives. They're just weaselly. Unnecessarily so, since in this particular case I'm not sure what alternative they had.)

Comments

[hashiveinu]

No comments about the passive voice. These aren't passives.

Thank you.

[cactuswatcher]

The one that gets me is using, "after" to mean "when" as in "so-and-so died after being shot 15 times in the head" instead of "so-and-so died when they were shot 15 times in the head," or "so-and-so died after a safe fell onto them from a fifth story window," instead of "so-and-so died when a safe..." Basically I'd prefer "when" if the person was pronounced dead at the scene and save "after" for those who at least lived till the ambulance pulled away with them still hanging on.

[sabotabby]

100%.

[gwydion]

I agree.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> The officer attempted to pull the vehicle over and a pursuit followed, Woodland police said.

No, the officer attempted to pull the vehicle over and then chose to pursue the car when the driver failed to stop. (Note: No comments about the passive voice. These aren't passives. They're just weaselly. <<

It actually is a sneaky sort of passive. Look at the phrase: "pursuit" is the subject and "followed" is the verb. But the pursuit isn't a person and didn't make the decision; it's an event that came after another event. "Mistakes were made" is the classic example of passive exonerative, because it takes the human mistake-maker out of the sentence with "were made." Mistakes don't make themselves. Hidden passive just makes the switch in a different way.

And what else could they do? Use the fucking radio. You don't need to chase anyone anymore. Just alert other police to close a net around them. They can't outrun the radio. But no, police have testosterone poisoning and want to hunt down their prey. It makes very clear their descent from slavecatchers. >_< Which becomes everyone's problem when they decide to chase someone at 80 mph through heavy traffic, endangering even more lives.

Re: Thoughts

[conuly]

It's not the passive voice just because the topicalization is funky.

"A pursuit followed" is an active voice construction. Something followed. What followed? A pursuit. The passive voice would be "The driver was followed by a pursuit" which, honestly, just skirts the edges of grammatical in my speech and probably everybody else's.

"Passive voice" does not mean "weaselly speech to hide accountability". There is no such thing as a hidden or sneaky passive. It's a grammatical term, not a judgment on people's word choices. "Mistakes were made" is a passive, but so is "guns were fired irresponsibly in every direction by every officer involved" and you can't say that hides the people responsible. It just topicalizes the guns.

And what else could they do? Use the fucking radio. You don't need to chase anyone anymore. Just alert other police to close a net around them. They can't outrun the radio.

I'm not sure adding more police is the solution to police.

Re: Thoughts

[conuly]

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922

[poliphilo]

People- often uninvolved passers by- get killed and injured in such chases and property is damaged. Police should be discouraged from reacting like Dirty Harry.

[malada]

Yeah, that often puzzled me about some police chases: they know the person via license plates etc, so they could easily let the idiot drive off - NOT chase them, and just wait for them to go home.

Other times: person is driving badly or the driver is on the wanted list, a chase might make sense. Otherwise, a radio/cellphone coordinated roundup is much safer.

People who run from the police are usually scared - and scared people make stupid decisions. Police who continue chases are usually fueled by hormones - and hormone fueled people make stupid decisions.

This is not Hollywood. People die in these chases.

[frandroid]

Counterpoint: They don't know that the person at the wheel is the owner of the vehicle. A non-insignificant number of these chases are about going after someone who is driving a stolen vehicle.

But yeah, they still don't need to drive at maximum speed to catch them. Some jurisdictions have capped police pursuit speed since it puts the public in danger. Unfortunately, these caps usually come after some really nasty pursuit-related accident killed people other than the pursued.

[silveradept]

Because of the likelihood of high-speed pursuits causing greater injury and death, the police here have been mostly forbidden from engaging in them over stolen vehicles or situations like this, and predictably, the people who want police to terrorize and intimidate everyone have been complaining that we've descended into anarchic chaos, but there also haven't been these kinds of injury and death situations caused by police chases at high speeds. So, y'know, I'll take living people over property crime.

[nicki]

A quick note from a localish person. Woodland is not big and there isn't a lot of crime (probably mostly speeding and domestic violence, maybe some minor drug crimes and probably some drunk driving). I suspect the police department isn't very experienced in chase or do not chase type decision making.

[conuly]

All the more reason they should be trained NOT to chase except when they know the situation is serious.

But at any rate, while I do think this is yet another thing American police need to fix, in this case my issue is with the choice of reporters to just agree with pro-police framing.