San Francisco Could Be Liable for Any Injuries in Bait Car Sting

Creating a liability for the city?

​In the wake of the police's collaboration with the Bait Car reality TV program, disgruntled people caught on the show are now threatening lawsuits. We've blogged about truTV being sued for defamation from someone claiming they never signed a release for his image to be used on TV. But could this come back and bite the city as well?

It certainly did in Dallas, where there is a more conservative culture around civil rights. A man who drove off in one of the police's bait cars -- not for the show -- hit and killed an 83-year-old woman. The city decided it created enough of a legal liability, so it shelled out a $245,000 settlement to the victim's family, who had sued for wrongful death.



  
The Dallas police's car -- like the ones donated to the SFPD's fleet by the show -- was equipped with a GPS system and a kill switch that allows police to track the car's movement and shut it down remotely. Yet it took 27 seconds for the Dallas police to stop the car. Police said the delay was due to the five-step process of shutting the car down.

The San Francisco city attorney's office wouldn't comment on a hypothetical situation, but it seems there's the danger of the Dallas scenario repeating in our city's bustling, pedestrian-heavy street. The San Francisco episodes shown so far (some of them are now available on Bait Car's website) have their share of crappy drivers. One spacey dude, who admitted to cops he'd never driven before, backed into a bush in the parking lot of the McDonald's on Haight Street. He asked the officers how he did, to which Officer Brandon Lew cracked, "A little rough to start."

Another driver admitted "I'm a drunk driver" to himself while he looked around his new car. Many have no licenses or are suspended from driving, and they're often pumped with  adrenaline from making off in a car that's not theirs.



SFPD spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield says that police policy prohibits cops from engaging in a high-speed chase to stop a mere car thief. There has to be a serious felony to warrant a chase -- such as a rapist, kidnapper, or alleged gunman speeding away in a car. Even then, cops can use their discretion to decide when the chase becomes more of a safety hazard than a method to catch a criminal.

"If the person is going toward an elementary school where kids are about to get out of school, the officers would discontinue that because it might cause the suspect to run into those kids," Dangerfield says. "The officer cuts off all lights and sirens and makes [the] first right or left off that roadway, so the suspect feels they can relax." 

The point of the remote-controlled system in the bait cars would render chases unnecessary -- stopping the thief in his tracks and locking him into the car. Yet on Bait Car, the remote-controlled system failed in one of the episodes from other cities, leading to the police to speed after him in an industrial zone.

Good for TV, but probably not good for the city.