Family of Mpls. woman killed in high-speed crash speaks out

[Pinnacle]

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S404591.shtml?cat=1

Posted at: 04/07/2008 09:29:27 PM
Updated at: 04/07/2008 10:38:25 PM
By: Nicole Muehlhausen, Web Producer

Family of Mpls. woman killed in high-speed crash speaks out Hanna Abukar, 26

The family of a mother killed after a high-speed chase is questioning decisions made by police as they pursued a stolen car over the weekend.

A supervisor called off the chase just a half-mile after it started because of the high speeds and risk to the innocent. Minneapolis Police said they tried to pull over the 15-year-old driving a stolen car, when he took off down Lake Street.

But the 15-year-old suspect didn’t stop and ended up crashing into another vehicle.

The son of 26-year-old Hanna Abukar remains in serious condition at Hennepin County Medical Center.

"The family is shocked, devastated, and in mourning," said Abdul-Kadir Afrah, Abukar’s cousin.

Abukar’s family said she was bringing her son and a friend to Islamic Sunday school in Minneapolis.

"She was a very beautiful lady -- very loving, everybody loved her," said Afrah.

Abukar’s family thinks police should have never started the pursuit in the first place.

"We feel it was totally wrong the police were chasing a suspect in the middle of a commercial area," Afrah said.

Police said they followed their pursuit policy that requires a supervisor to terminate the chase if it becomes too dangerous. Afrah thinks that the Minneapolis Police supervisor made the decision too late.

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Now this is interesting - the MPLS PD Chases someone for 1/2 mi - they decide that it is too dangerous to chase any farther - call it off - kid kills this woman and puts her kids in the hospital - tragic but notice that you wont see anywhere in the article the meere mention of the 15 yo #2 that actually was the one responsible fro the accident to begin with.... Nope.

1/2 mi chase? they call the "Chase" 1/2 mi into it - I would barely call that a chase... This is going to be a screwed deal now for the cops - you wait and see. Now there will be a no chase policy in Minneapolis - now it is a total free for all.

Funny - folks come here to chase the american dream - live in peace and freedom and well - the first thing that they must learn is where to find a schister mouthpiece that will find the deep pockets in any situation. You know the real villian here is not the MPD (others will have you think otherwise) how about the kid that stole the car to begin with?

Absolutely 100% the fault of the MPD that some 15 year old piece of **** steals a car and kills someone? I wonder if they will treat this like a stolen gun - I can just see it now - "well Mr. Car owner - you failed to properly secure your vehicle and as a result someone was killed. Now your insurance is going to have to pay for this and btw you are open to all liability both criminally and civilly for the 15 yo #2 stealing your car and killing this woman and putting her kids in the hospital on their way to sunday school."

If MPLS settles this one - I am afraid that they may as well fold up tentstakes..... Yikes.


I know that some will think that I am cold hearted. Well, I am not. I am a realist.

[Jeff Bergquist]

Don't make too much of what the family says. Police tactics have obviously been a very contentious issue lately, but I suspect that a vast majority of the citizenry will agree that MPD did nothing wrong here. If anything, calling off chases might err on the side of being too concerned with collateral damage at the cost of allowing increased disrespect for the law.

[Srigs]

The MPD did the right thing based on the facts but the inexperienced 15 year old driving is the real killer here. I hope they charge him as an adult. I bet she was not wearing her seat belt.

[princewally]

The MPD did the right thing based on the facts but the inexperienced 15 year old driving is the real killer here.

+1

[cobb]

The MPD did the right thing based on the facts but the inexperienced 15 year old driving is the real killer here. I hope they charge him as an adult.

And continue to do the right thing, put him away for a long, long time. They are talking about this on a couple radio stations this morning and a person said that bad things could happen to a young 15 year old that get put in prison. Well, don't steal cars, rob convenience stores and kill people, so that you have to go to jail. I mean, isn't jail suppose to be a deterrent or s punishment and not just a time out?

[joelr]

[deleted by poster]

[DeanC]

Come on you guys. In the spirit of blaming guns for crime, we need to blame the cars for this tragedy. If only we had more free trains this would never have happened.

[cobb]

I personally do not like to call off a chase, it sends the wrong message, drive crazy and they will let you go. But I was not there and there may have been other factors that made it a good decision.

[Pinnacle]

The MPD did the right thing based on the facts but the inexperienced 15 year old driving is the real killer here. I hope they charge him as an adult. I bet she was not wearing her seat belt.

There are no easy answers to chase/no chase issues. If you always give chase, there will be more incidents of car thieves smashing into innocent folks than there otherwise would be. This is probably one of those -- which is why the police belatedly called off the chase after, so they say, only half a mile. They were trying to, I would guess, avoid the horror that happened.

Nevertheless, the chase had started; if not for the theft in the first place, the innocents would not have been harmed. If not for the chase, the innocents would not have been harmed. (That's almost certain; car thieves not being chased do not appear to drive at great speeds very often.)

As I blogged about months ago, all kinds of chase policies have their costs. No-chase policies would seem to encourage car theft -- although, it's worth noting that the Metro suburbs that have no-chase policies do not seem to be any more car theft paradises then do cities like Minneapolis that do not.

Promiscuous chase policies -- even when the chase is called off -- have costs that are inflicted upon, pretty much exclusively, the innocents.

If it's convenient to blame only one party in this, you can always blame only the car thief. I'm not sure how much good that does, and I'm pretty sure that unless and until felony car theft, even as a first offense, tends to result in jail time, there won't be much of a deterrent at all. (Right now, if the perp's first felony is a car theft, he will not go to prison. In Minnesota, that is; other states have different priorities. That said, while it's a public policy decision to keep the prisons filled with as many drug dealers and drug users as possible, there will be problems in finding room for car thieves, rapists, robbers, and people who perform other naughty activities. The number of people who loudly demand that more money be spent on prisons to be located near their backyards is, pretty easily counted, on the thumbs of my third hand. I don't have a third hand.

My own theory is that a decision to chase should be made only by a police officer with that least five solid years of good street experience, under competent, mature leadership. It should not be made by adrenaline-driven young officers who are out to make a name for themselves in troubled departments. That may or may not have happened this time; we'll never know.

This is another one where, of course, the Minneapolis taxpayers will take it in the shorts. The city -- which is self-insured; it would be hard to find an insurance company that would be willing to insure Minneapolis, given the frequency and size of the judgments -- will, predictably, settle with the families, pronounce that their officers, despite the judgment, never did anything wrong, nobody saw anything, you can't prove nothing, and they won't ever do it again.

(It is not true, by the way, that Minneapolis regularly hires the law firm of Bart Simpson, Esq. to represent it in such cases. It just feels that way.)

Standby everyone the earth is about to stop spinning as I actually agree with Joel on this one - it is a bad situation no matter how you look at it. Dammed if you do and dammed if you dont.

The real problem here is the taxpayers are going to take it in the shorts unless the MPD Defends itself and its actions and just refuses to roll over.

Tragic chain of events - no simple answers

[DeanC]

no simple answers

Tractor beam

[GregM]

I am sad for this family's loss.

But, if they go after a settlement, I withdraw all sympathy.

[ttousi]

no simple answers

Tractor beam

RPG mounted on hood of squad

[1911fan]

and with this, you have a 15 year old kid, now guilty of felony murder.

[Fast351]

And once again the taxpayer takes it in the rear. Nothing to see here, move along.

[JonL]

... Standby everyone the earth is about to stop spinning as I actually agree with Joel on this one ...

And I thought the tremor that knocked me off my chair was an earthquake.