Steven Gaydos didn't see anyone when he blew through a stop sign on his motorcycle "out in the middle of nowhere" just past midnight on Dec. 23, 2012. But parked in the shadows of the intersection in unincorporated Chambers County was a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper. He pulled in behind the 25-year-old's Suzuki 750 and started following.
"I knew it was a cop," Gaydos said later. "I took off, thinking I could easily lose him." Nearly 40 miles later, however, after a hair-raising chase over Chambers and Harris county highways that reached speeds of 130 mph, Gaydos lay on the side of a residential road just outside of Houston -- shot in the thigh and then karate kicked off his bike by another state trooper who'd joined the chase.
The trooper, Abraham Martinez, last year received a minor penalty for the incident -- three days off without pay. Yet the fact that a traffic infraction could escalate into a lengthy, high-speed motorcycle pursuit ending in gun shots provides graphic illustration of how DPS's relatively permissive use-of-force restrictions during pursuits is out of step with evolving national standards, experts said. The nation's leading researcher on police pursuits, University of South Carolina criminal justice Professor Geoffrey Alpert, called the agency's policy permitting troopers to shoot at fleeing vehicles "stupid."