On October 26, Marysville police used a sticky GPS dart to track a stolen vehicle after its driver fled, disengaging rather than pursuing it through city streets. The device let officers watch the car's movements from a distance before closing in, and two people ran on foot; investigators determined the disabled car was stolen and its license plates had been changed.
According to KOMO News, Marysville police first received information about a stolen license plate traveling through the city, and a Marysville police sergeant located the stolen car and coordinated resources before attempting a traffic stop. A Marysville police corporal arrived with StarChase, the GPS tracking system, and when the driver fled after officers tried to pull the car over, police disengaged from the pursuit rather than chase it directly.
Instead, officers used real-time location information from StarChase to monitor the vehicle while coordinating resources, per KOMO's reporting. The driver attempted to avoid a spike strip deployment, but police said they ultimately disabled the car. Two people then fled on foot, triggering a response coordinated between patrol officers and members of the department's training unit.
Foot Chase Ends Near Grove Street
An officer chased the suspect, who ran into the path of additional officers near Grove Street and State Avenue, according to the same KOMO report. Officers moved in, but the suspect got back up and ran again through heavy traffic; the driver was taken into custody a short time later. A detective located the passenger separately, and investigators determined the vehicle had been stolen from another jurisdiction with its license plates changed.
Marysville police said training and technology can support measured decisions in high-risk situations and can improve officer safety while reducing public risk, KOMO reported. The department's account frames the dart deployment as a deliberate alternative to a traditional pursuit, one that let officers track the car's position without the risks of a high-speed chase through city streets.
How the Tracking Darts Work
StarChase devices deploy an adhesive tracking tag that attaches to a fleeing vehicle, allowing officers to follow its location remotely rather than staying on its bumper. A separate report on a Snohomish County incident from MyNorthwest described the darts as using a combination of magnets and adhesive to stick to vehicles, letting police monitor their location in real time; that report could not be confirmed as describing this same Marysville case. The broader aim, as framed in that account, is to reduce the need for potentially dangerous pursuits altogether.
The technology has been spreading among Washington agencies in recent years. Lynnwood Police reported using a StarChase tracker more than 60 times in 2023, and a department spokesperson told FOX 13 Seattle that the tool sometimes helped officers and detectives locate a vehicle within 30 minutes — a process that could otherwise take two weeks or a month. Thurston County Sheriff's Office separately purchased five StarChase GPS dart trackers along with six Grappler Police Bumpers, with plans to expand the bumper fleet to ten and have the equipment fully installed by the end of summer, per the same station's reporting.
Similar Tools Used Elsewhere
Washington's Office of Financial Management has been gathering pursuit data from agencies statewide, saying it had obtained information from 64 agencies along with the Washington State Patrol, covering calendar years 2019 through 2024, though the available excerpt includes no totals or conclusions. Outside Washington, four police and sheriff's departments in the Twin Cities region were using StarChase as of 2022, according to CBS News, which described the system as propelling a dart-like cartridge from a squad car onto the rear of a suspected stolen vehicle. Ramsey County Deputy Joe Kill, who had used the device for about three weeks at the time, said he thought it would help recover more stolen cars safely, and grant money was funding the technology for three squads in his county.
More recently, the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office in New York began rolling out its own GPS-tracking darts to tag fleeing vehicles and track them without a high-speed pursuit, according to ABC7 New York. Sheriff Errol D. Toulon Jr. said the adhesive tag allows officers to stop following a vehicle while still monitoring its exact location, though officials there declined to say how many sheriff's cars carry the devices. Washington law separately requires supervising officers, pursuing officers, or dispatchers to notify other agencies that may be affected or called on to assist during a pursuit, and to follow agency procedures for coordinating with surrounding jurisdictions, under RCW 10.116.060.
