On December 26, a 24-year-old man died in a brutal car crash with a box truck following a high-speed police chase after he was pulled over in Warren, Michigan. Police maintain that they were doing their job despite the fact no one should be condemned to death for a traffic violation.
In fact, police are putting 100 percent of the blame on the driver for his choice to drive away from a police stop. The family of Maurice Kelley tells 7 Action News Detroit that he was pulled over on his lunch break for expired license plate tabs. Kelley reportedly told officers he didn’t have his license on him (it was actually suspended). They asked him to get out of his 2015 Chevy Cruz, but that’s when he put the car in drive and took off.
Police dashcam footage shows Kelley being chased for about three minutes on residential streets. Warren Police Commissioner William Dwyer said police were following Kelley at “moderate speeds” but 7 Action News reports officers traveled as fast as 107 mph during the chase. The average speed of the chase was 82 mph. That’s not exactly “moderate.”
Eventually and unfortunately, Kelley eventually ran through a red light and crashed beneath a box truck. Police called firefighters to the scene and tried to rescue him, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
“It’s an unfortunate incident, because this subject is dead due to the choice he made to flee from officers,” Warren Police Commission William Dwyer said, The Detroit News reports. What a ghoulishly callous comment.
Here’s what else police had to say about the chase and crash (take this with a huge grain of salt because cops, you know, lie a lot), according to The Detroit News:
Police supervisors authorized and monitored the officers’ chase in real time, a judgement call Dwyer said he supported after reviewing the case.
[…]
Police did not know the driver’s identity until after the crash, Dwyer said.
”In many, many cases, maybe in the majority of cases we run into, when we have a fleeing and eluding particular case, that always leads up to someone that was either wanted on a felony, convicted of a felony, or going to commit a felony,” Dwyer said.
Police later learned the man had a misdemeanor warrant for a traffic violation, Dwyer said.
The man also had a 2018 Oakland County felony conviction and a 2019 Wayne County felony conviction for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, Dwyer said.
Police found a loaded Glock semi-automatic handgun on the car’s floorboard after the crash, Dwyer said. That gun was previously reported stolen, he said.
“We all feel bad that someone died, but the officers were doing their job,” Dwyer said. “If he would have stopped, he would be with us today.”
For years now, police departments have been cutting down on police pursuits because of the risk they pose to the public, according to 7 Action News. In 2022, Michigan State Police put a policy in place that only allows officers to chase a suspect if they’re wanted for a felony, driving the wrong direction down an interstate or posing an “imminent threat to public safety” for reasons other than the chase itself.
This was the 293rd police chase in Warren in 2023. Perhaps it is time for the Warren Police Department to take a good hard look at their practices before even more people die.