The State’s recent editorial (“Lawmakers should demand new police pursuit guidelines,” July 26) correctly pointed out that statewide pursuit guidelines should be put into place, but stopped short of addressing other critical issues that must be addressed if statewide guidelines are to be effective.

In the early 1990s, the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, now a division of the Department of Public Safety, promulgated regulations that required all South Carolina law enforcement agencies not only to develop pursuit policies, but also to train their officers on the pursuit policy. The regulations, still in effect, require that an agency’s pursuit policy and its training program be approved by the Department of Public Safety and that the pursuit training be repeated at least annually. Agencies that do not comply with the regulatory requirements are subject to civil penalty.

The regulations, however, leave to agencies the decision on whether their policies will allow officers broad discretion in the conduct of pursuits or whether restrictions will be placed on pursuit operations by, for example, prohibiting pursuit for traffic or other minor violations or limiting pursuits to violent felonies, as is becoming a more common practice nationally.

The State’s suggestion that South Carolina develop a statewide “uniform pursuit policy” is commendable and follows the approach taken by other states, but needs qualification. First, the state cannot create a single statewide pursuit “policy” that can address the needs of all South Carolina law enforcement agencies. While uniform minimum guidelines for pursuit are clearly needed, as is, perhaps, a model policy, the operational postures of the state’s law enforcement agencies are widely disparate, and no single policy can address the specific operational needs of every agency.

Second, the development of uniform statewide guidelines will have no impact if agencies do not train to their specific policies that incorporate the guidelines. Although training on statewide guidelines could be offered by a central source, the training required for an agency’s specific policy provisions, which incorporate the guidelines, can only be implemented by the agency itself.

In some agencies, however, the extent of pursuit policy training begins and ends with an officer’s passing awareness that the agency “has a pursuit policy.” Often, there is no training provided to explain policy terminology (for example, what does it mean to “terminate” the pursuit?) and there is no discussion of permissible or impermissible tactics (for example, do we permit the use of roadblocks?).

Third, statewide uniform guidelines, in and of themselves, will be of little benefit unless agencies are provided assistance in addressing a far more fundamental, and difficult, training concern: pursuit decision-making. This concern is not one that can be addressed solely by the presence of a policy. The officer adrenaline that often accompanies high-speed pursuits can only be addressed by meaningful training to assist officers in making rational, as opposed to visceral, decisions when they become involved in the heat of a chase.

In conjunction with this training, agencies must also establish specific pursuit supervisory requirements and implement officer accountability controls, such as progressive discipline measures addressing pursuits.

Despite suggestions several years ago that the state of South Carolina should create and staff a statewide office to assist law enforcement agencies in managing the risks of critical operations such as pursuit, that recommendation has gone unheeded. Our citizens deserve law enforcement officers who are professionally responsive to their needs and who have been provided the guidance, training and resources necessary to responsibly protect the public.

Until we learn from our police pursuit history, however, the words of the philosopher George Santayana will remain particularly salient: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Mr. Smith, a Columbia attorney, is co-author of Police Pursuits: What We Know (Police Executive Research Forum, 2000) as well as numerous other publications on police pursuits.