BUFFALO, N.Y. — Almost 48 hours later and what happened Sunday along Elmwood Avenue is still raising questions.
But, it’s not what happened that Buffalo Police were eager to answer in a press conference Tuesday afternoon — it was how police responded.
“This is an absolute tragedy, and my condolences go out to the family,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said. “A 14-year-old should not be dead in a car accident, should not be dead in any type of encounter like this.”
Late Sunday, around 11:30 p.m., Buffalo Police observed a vehicle speeding before it crashed into two other vehicles and left the driver, a 14-year-old male, dead.
Police initially said in a press release that officers “attempted to catch up to the vehicle with lights and sirens engaged.”
But Tuesday, Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia clarified police’s efforts.
“I would not consider this to be a pursuit,” Gramaglia said. “Several different city cameras along the route on Hertel show that the police car at no point had its emergency lights on and was not in what we would consider to be a pursuit driving mode.”
The commissioner’s need to clarify stems from strict restrictions in the Buffalo Police Manual of Procedures, which says officers may only engage in vehicular pursuits if there’s probable cause that the vehicle contains a violent felony suspect, if the immediate danger of the pursuit is less than the danger that the suspect poses, and if the officer is operating a marked vehicle.
The manual also says officers cannot engage in a pursuit when the initial violation is a crime against property or a traffic offense, and that’s what we saw Sunday: officers at the time, had just flagged this vehicle for speeding.
“It's a tragedy for the City of Buffalo, and it's also very impactful on our officers that had to witness that and that were also there attempting to help this young man,” Gramaglia said.
Those rules are in place because according to federal crash data, on average, more than 350 people are killed in the U.S. every year in police pursuits, and nearly a third of those killed are innocent bystanders.
That’s why the focus Tuesday was not just on what happened, but how to prevent other similar situations from ever happening in the first place.
“This is an absolute awful ending to a situation that did not have to happen,” Gramaglia said.