Chief Hurtt’s no-chase policy just keeps looking worse and worse… A new user registered over at bH to bring us the following tidbits:

From the Chronicle, about Rusty Hardin’s holdup:

Shortly after the incident, Bellaire police attempted to pull over three men in a green vehicle with a license plate light that wasn’t working, but the men sped away.

West University police spotted the same car later, and six Bellaire and West University police officers stopped it.

The men were ordered out of the car one by one. Hardin’s property and a gun were found inside the vehicle. All three men were arrested; it was a little over an hour after the robbery, police said.

From KTRK, Channel 13:

Prosecutors told a judge they performed ballistic tests on bullets in a gun taken from Jeffrey Mitchell after he was charged with robbing Rusty Hardin. Police say the bullets match those that killed 15-year-old Andrea Mayberry in June. Investigators believe Mitchell shot and killed Mayberry after the teen challenged him to a fight in west Houston.

A simple traffic stop, and an armed robbery plus a killing are solved. There’s a simple principle at work here: someone who is so dismissive of the law as to commit felonies, to rob and kill people, is hardly going to show more respect to even less imporant laws, like those governing traffic and their vehicle. Thus, the routine traffic stop is a valid and useful criminal-catching tactic. And if someone runs from a simple traffic stop, the odds are they have a bigger reason than not wanting a simple ticket.

In the end, there is a very small chance in every chase that something bad may happen. There is a very large certainty that letting criminals run away from the law will allow many more bad things to happen.

Get the picture, Hurtt? If you don’t, go back to Phoenix.

(And I’m still on hiatus, dammit!)