Oklahoma City police have released aerial drone footage showing a short car chase that ended in a crash on the city's southwest side. The video, captured by the department's Real Time Information Center, shows the pursuit unfolding from above before the vehicle involved crashes.
The footage was shared on August 14, according to KFOR, which reported that police shared the drone video documenting the chase and its crash ending in southwest Oklahoma City. The station's report does not specify what led officers to initiate the pursuit or whether anyone was hurt in the crash, and those details remain unclear.
How OKCPD's Drone Unit Tracks Fleeing Vehicles
The Real Time Information Center routinely deploys aerial drones during active pursuits, foot chases, and armed suspect searches, streaming live video and thermal tracking directly to officers on the ground, per the Oklahoma City Police Department. The department has expanded its drone program in recent years specifically to reduce the risks ground officers face while rapidly locating fleeing suspects.
This is not the first time OKCPD has turned to drone oversight to document a chase gone wrong. Just days earlier on the southwest side, officers arrested a 36-year-old driver after he performed burnout donuts near SW 31st Street and Miller Avenue, led police on a pursuit exceeding 60 mph, and struck two vehicles near SW 30th Street and Agnew Avenue. The department also deployed a drone and K-9 unit during an overnight pursuit crash in northeast Oklahoma City in April that ended with three arrests.
What Oklahoma Law Says About Fleeing Drivers
Fleeing or attempting to elude a police officer is generally a misdemeanor in Oklahoma carrying up to a year in jail, but the charge escalates to a Class C1 felony punishable by one to five years in state prison and up to $5,000 in fines when the driver endangers others or causes a crash, according to Justia Law. Whether that felony threshold applies to the southwest OKC chase has not been reported.
OKCPD's own pursuit policy, updated in June 2022, requires officers to self-terminate chases for property offenses, traffic infractions, or felony eluding when conditions turn dangerous, such as active school or construction zones, bad weather, or heavy pedestrian traffic, according to Free Press OKC. That same policy caps emergency response speeds at 15 mph over the posted limit on city streets and 25 mph on highways.
A State With a High Pursuit Death Toll
The southwest OKC crash adds to a pattern investigative reporters have flagged statewide. Oklahoma ranked eighth highest in the nation for police pursuit-related fatalities between 2016 and 2022, according to a Tulsa World analysis of federal traffic safety records. That same database recorded 12 fatal police pursuits involving OKCPD during that period, giving the department the second-highest pursuit death total of any Oklahoma law enforcement agency.
Roughly one in four people killed in Oklahoma police vehicle pursuits between 2016 and 2022 were innocent bystanders or third-party motorists, per a separate public records analysis reported by The Missoulian. Nationally, police vehicle pursuits cause more than 500 fatal crashes annually, including 545 deaths in 2020 and 525 in 2021, based on NHTSA statistics cited by the Police Executive Research Forum.
Under Oklahoma Emergency Vehicle Law and state Supreme Court precedent, officers involved in pursuits owe a legal duty of due regard for public safety and are not automatically shielded from civil liability if a chase decision shows reckless disregard for innocent motorists, according to Smolen Law. Whether that standard is relevant to Thursday's crash has not been addressed by police, and no additional details about injuries, arrests, or charges tied to the southwest OKC chase have been released.
