On a Sunday in early April, Dimeka Thornton told relatives that if death came for her that day or the next, she was spiritually ready. She knew her heart was with God.
Her family didn’t expect her words to be prophetic. Just after midnight, a 23-year-old man fleeing Baltimore County Police officers drove the wrong way onto Interstate 695’s outer loop and smashed head-on into Thornton’s car, killing her.
County police had seen the driver get into a car that had been reported stolen, tried to stop him and then chased him through Windsor Mill, according to the Maryland attorney general’s office. They didn’t follow him onto the Baltimore Beltway ramp.
Body-camera videos after the crash showed officers struggling to free Thornton as flames engulfed her car. The man, who was injured but survived, now faces charges of manslaughter and driving while impaired. Thornton, a Coppin State University graduate who worked at the Social Security Administration and sang in the Baltimore Bible Church choir, died at a hospital at age 37.
The Independent Investigations Division of the attorney general’s office is investigating the deaths of three women killed weeks apart in April when drivers fleeing law enforcement struck the women’s vehicles. Neither Thornton, 22-year-old Kayla Rodriguez-Garcia nor 25-year-old Jasmin Gimon were the target of the attempted police stops.
The close timing of their deaths — which took place in different counties and involved different agencies — has raised questions for the victims’ families and Attorney General Anthony Brown about the safety of police pursuits.
The majority of those killed in Maryland police chases in the past 2 1/2 years were either a passenger of the person officers were pursuing or were “bystanders” in an unrelated vehicle, highlighting the high cost of pursuits for people who happen to be nearby.
Policies for when police should pursue suspects vary across the state, with some law enforcement officers forbidden to chase fleeing vehicles and others given wide latitude. That’s something Brown said he would like to see changed.
“I’m alarmed and deeply troubled by the frequency of these incidents and I’m truly saddened by the loss of life,” Brown said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun. “We can and we must do better.”
His office also is investigating the May 13 death of a girl under 18. She was the front-seat passenger in a car that Calvert County Sheriff’s deputies pursued for 25 miles into Anne Arundel County, where the car hit a pickup truck. Responding to calls for vehicle break-ins, deputies wound up chasing this car, which had been stolen, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. The surviving driver and passengers are facing charges, the release said.
The deputies pursued the car at speeds as fast as 122 mph, deputies said in body-camera footage released Monday. When they approached the smashed blue car, one deputy shouted at the occupants, “if you f—— move your hands, I’ll shoot you,” and another shattered a back seat window with his gun. When emergency responders recognized that a passenger was unresponsive and bleeding, one deputy referred to her as “the girl in the passenger seat, the one that probably had nothing to do with this.”
The Independent Investigations Division has investigated deaths involving police, including fatal crashes and pursuits, since 2021.
Since it gained the ability to prosecute officers last fall, the division declined to prosecute officers in the case of one 2023 fatal pursuit in Montgomery County. Other cases are still under investigation.
For the purpose of investigating deaths, the division defines a pursuit as an attempt by an officer to apprehend someone actively trying to elude them. Generally, a “fatal crash” refers to a collision that did not occur during a pursuit, but involved some type of police action, such as a traffic stop, according to an attorney general’s office spokesperson.
The deaths of Rodriguez-Garcia, Thornton and the girl are categorized as “fatal pursuits,” while Gimon’s death is called a “fatal crash.”
On April 26, a memorial service was held for Rodriguez-Garcia, who died when a driver sped past a Carroll County Sheriff’s Office deputy, crossed a double yellow line and hit her SUV head-on. No one has been charged yet in her death.
A friend in Rodriguez-Garcia’s SUV also was hurt in the crash. That woman’s godmother was visiting the area for her adult daughter’s birthday. She stayed to comfort her injured goddaughter and attended Rodriguez-Garcia’s memorial service.
In a horrifying coincidence, godmother Zelandia Gimon learned the morning after the service that her own daughter — Jasmin Gimon — also was killed after a collision involving a driver who had been followed by police. The two women died a week apart.
“It was devastating,” Zelandia Gimon said. “I thought I was making that up. I couldn’t even understand what they were trying to tell me.”
A driver who didn’t pull over for Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office deputies had hit Jasmin Gimon’s car as she left a bartending shift in Rockville. Zelandia Gimon and Jasmin’s older sister, Llusi Oliverio, blame the fleeing driver, a 21-year-old man facing manslaughter charges, for Jasmin’s death.
But they hope the recent deaths prompt scrutiny of how law enforcement agencies carry out pursuits.
“Our families have been fundamentally changed. I think that just out of human decency, these processes need to be looked at with a fine-tooth comb to see if there’s any way these situations can be changed in the future,” Oliverio said. “Is it really worth chasing a stolen car when that car could potentially kill somebody? Is that car’s value worth more than a human life? Is that arrest warrant worth a human life?”
To calculate how often pursuits are fatal, The Sun requested data from 15 Maryland law enforcement agencies, including each one involved in a vehicle death that the attorney general’s office has investigated since Oct. 1, 2021.
A spokesperson for Baltimore Police, which tied the Charles County Sheriff’s Office and Montgomery County Police for the most fatal vehicle pursuits or crashes investigated during that time period, according to the attorney general’s office, said the department’s data team “did not possess any data on vehicle pursuits.”
During 2022 and 2023, the eight agencies that responded with data saw three deaths out of 658 pursuits, or less than half a percent of police pursuits. Those agencies are Maryland State Police, Anne Arundel County Police, Baltimore County Police, Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Howard County Police, Calvert County Sheriff’s Office, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and Prince George’s County Police.
The majority of people killed in police chases in Maryland since the attorney general’s office began investigating were either passengers in fleeing vehicles or bystanders.
Of the 19 Maryland deaths since October 2021 — excluding a man on a scooter fatally struck by a Baltimore Police officer responding to another call — five were passengers in the pursued vehicle and six were bystanders. Fatal pursuits or crashes made up more than a third of the police-involved deaths the division has investigated.
Policing experts say that, in general, pursuits are dangerous.
“It’s risky for three different entities: for the police officer or officers who are pursuing, for the suspect you are pursuing and for third parties, people who have nothing to do with a pursuit,” said Chuck Wexler, president of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington think tank.
Those risks require communities to weigh whether catching someone for a crime like stealing a car is worth a life, Wexler said.
Because no national standards exist for law enforcement pursuit policies, the U.S. Justice Department and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asked Wexler’s organization to develop recommendations for agencies. Its report in September encouraged agencies to restrict pursuits to people believed to have committed violent crimes and who pose an imminent threat of committing another violent crime.
Some local agencies — including Baltimore Police and the Maryland State Police — have rules about the circumstances in which police should initiate pursuits, including the specific crimes.
Policies for chases, including when officers should start one, vary across Maryland’s more than 150 law enforcement agencies.
“I would like to see a statewide standard for vehicle pursuits, but the standard also has to take into account different population densities and geography. The goal of the standard would be to enhance safety, reduce fatalities and ensure that law enforcement can continue to do its job,” Brown said.
The Independent Investigations Division’s experience shows that analysis and evaluation of pursuits by a state agency also would be “warranted,” Brown said. He added that there should be clear guidelines on when an officer can initiate a pursuit, but did not suggest specific guidelines or how they should be developed and implemented.
The Maryland Police Training and Standards Commission maintains “objectives” for entry-level law enforcement officers related to safely driving during a pursuit, including requiring that police academies teach students “the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing a vehicle” and how to identify differences between pursuits in different areas and conditions. The specifics of that training are up to individual agencies.
Clyde Boatwright, president of the Maryland State Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents most of the state’s police officers, said different agencies should be able to determine what works best based on their particular needs and context.
“If you make it a cookie-cutter-type scenario, then everyone’s stuck within that same box,” Boatwright said.
He also expressed concern about the impact of letting potential lawbreakers know that police won’t pursue them for traffic violations or if they have an open warrant.
Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina who researches high-risk police activities, said that although more studies are needed on the effect of recent efforts to curtail chases, existing research shows that when police stop pursuing suspects, the crime rate doesn’t rise.
“What we’ve learned over the years is, when the cop stops chasing, it’s more than likely that the fleeing suspect is going to slow down. And that might be our best approach to pursuits,” Alpert said. “Unfortunately, letting someone go for the time being is probably safer for the public than chasing after someone.”
Baltimore County, the agency that chased the driver accused of hitting Thornton, requires an officer and supervisor to weigh the risks of pursuing a suspect against “the primary responsibility of preserving life.” The department’s policy has a matrix of risk factors to consider in different situations and instructs officers not to pursue suspects for minor traffic or civil violations when the person’s identity is known. County officers engaged in 254 pursuits between 2021 and the end of 2023, according to the department.
“Emphasizing the safety of our officers and our communities, the department’s policy includes specific guidelines that must be met for an officer to initiate or continue a pursuit,” spokeswoman Joy Stewart wrote in a statement.
She also said the policy specifies “specific conditions under which pursuits are authorized,” and requires officers to evaluate public safety risk, includes “immediate supervisor oversight” and “ongoing assessment” and provides “conditions under which a pursuit must be terminated.”
Alpert, who was chair of the Police Executive Research Forum working group that created the September report, said leaders should set training and policies for pursuits well before they’re needed. As for policies that depend on an officer’s discretion, “that’s the worst. You’re forcing an officer to make a series of decisions in the heat of the chase,” he said.
The Calvert County Sheriff’s Office, whose deputies pursued the car with the young passenger who died in May, allows high-speed pursuits, but says they should be “used with discretion and after conscious deliberation, not as the product of the deputy’s emotions.” Since Oct. 1, 2021, the agency has been involved in 134 pursuits.
Spokesperson Kristen Leitch said in an email that the office’s policy “is within the confines of the law and leans toward discretionary with limiting factors.” The deputy involved and their supervisor consider factors such as the offense involved, the density of traffic and highway characteristics, and either person can call it off, she said.
The Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, the agency that attempted a traffic stop before Rodriguez-Garcia’s death, restricts high-speed pursuits to situations involving violent felonies and hit-and-run accidents where serious injury or death has occurred. The office reported 10 pursuits since October 2021.
Sheriff James T. DeWees said through a spokesperson that the policy is reviewed periodically and that his office will “likely make changes to the current policy in the next month.”
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, the agency that tried to stop the driver accused of hitting Gimon, forbids deputies from engaging in pursuits, a policy in place for decades. The attorney general’s office has described her death as a crash, not a pursuit.
“It’s a heavy burden that gets put on the law enforcement officers or deputies to decide whether or not to pursue,” Chief Deputy Robert Lehman said.
This article has been updated to clarify how the Police Executive Research Forum came to develop national recommendations for police pursuits. Coming Monday: Should the Baltimore Police Department keep track of how often its officers pursue vehicles?
