A Cincinnati police pursuit that began downtown and stretched across the West Side ended Thursday afternoon near State and Harrison Avenues in East Price Hill, leaving two officers and three bystanders injured and three people in custody. Police say the vehicle they were chasing had been flagged as connected to a homicide investigation, though the involvement of the people inside remains unclear.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, officers began chasing the car westbound on Central Parkway near the Hamilton County Courthouse, then followed it down Ninth Street past the downtown branch of the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. Cincinnati police spokesman Brad Underwood said the vehicle had a damaged headlight, scrapes along its side and a passenger door hanging open, details that suggest the chase was already chaotic well before it reached its final stretch.
The pursuit ultimately involved three separate crashes, per Underwood. The suspects' vehicle first crashed into another vehicle downtown, then two police cruisers collided with each other in Queensgate as officers responded, and a final crash near State and Harrison Avenues sent three bystanders to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. Two officers were also hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, the paper reported.
A Route Through the Heart of the West Side
The chase covered roughly four miles, tracing a path from downtown along Ninth Street and Central Parkway, through the Queensgate industrial corridor, and finally into East Price Hill, according to Open Data Cincinnati. That route runs through some of the city's densest commercial and transit zones, the kind of terrain that makes any high-speed pursuit especially risky for officers, suspects and bystanders alike.
Three people are now in custody after being apprehended by police, per Underwood, though the Enquirer's reporting notes their connection to the underlying homicide case has not been established. The identity of that homicide investigation itself has not been made public either. The Enquirer says it will update its report as more information becomes available.
Why Cincinnati Police Were Allowed to Chase at All
Cincinnati police don't chase every fleeing driver. Under Cincinnati Police Department Procedure 12.535, revised in 2022, officers are restricted from initiating vehicle pursuits unless the suspect is believed to have committed a violent felony, a threshold laid out by the City of Cincinnati. Because the vehicle in Thursday's chase had been flagged as connected to a homicide investigation, officers were permitted to pursue it under that policy.
The same procedure requires officers involved in a pursuit to keep their body-worn cameras active, treating any failure to do so as an administrative equipment violation. Cincinnati's 2022 policy overhaul followed intense public scrutiny after an August 2020 chase that reached 100 mph and ended in a crash in Newport, Kentucky, killing two bystanders and severely injuring two others — a tragedy that reshaped how the department weighs the risks of letting officers give chase.
State Law and a Broader Pattern of Fleeing Drivers
Ohio law also shapes how local departments handle pursuits. Ohio Revised Code Section 2935.031 requires every law enforcement agency in the state to maintain a written pursuit policy incorporating standards from the Ohio Collaborative Community-Police Advisory Board, and Ohio House Bill 56, enacted in October 2024, increased criminal penalties statewide for fleeing or eluding police while mandating updated pursuit training for officers. Under Ohio Revised Code Section 2921.331, fleeing a police signal becomes a third-degree felony when the driver's conduct creates a substantial risk of serious physical harm to people or property — a threshold that multiple crashes and injuries, like Thursday's, could potentially meet.
Fleeing drivers are far from rare on Cincinnati streets. The city recorded 14,086 traffic crashes in 2025, with police logging 4,082 hit-and-run incidents, meaning nearly 29 percent of all vehicle crashes involved a driver who fled, according to data compiled by ThatCarHitMe. Across Hamilton County as a whole, total crashes reached 28,911 last year, resulting in 53 fatal collisions and more than 4,000 reported injuries, the same data shows. A nationwide study published by the National Institutes of Health in November 2024 cataloged 3,004 fatal police pursuits across the country between 2017 and 2021, underscoring the inherent risks that pursuits like Thursday's carry even when policy allows them.
Hoodline has previously reported on other Cincinnati-area pursuits gone wrong, including a chase that injured an officer near Harrison Township and another that ended with a crash on Blue Rock Road. Whether Thursday's pursuit prompts an internal review of tactical decisions or body-camera compliance remains an open question, as does the precise status of the three people now in custody relative to the homicide case that triggered the chase.
