Another high-speed car chase in DC spotlights Park Police’s norm-shattering pursuit guidelines

WASHINGTON (CN) — As rush hour commuters made their way out of Washington, D.C., Tuesday on one of the capital city’s major traffic arteries, a phalanx of police cars engaged in a high-speed car chase, which spanned roughly 10 miles and ended with a wreck in a busy Maryland intersection.

The pursuit — spurred by reports of a stolen vehicle — was led by U.S. Park Police. Nearly a year ago, President Donald Trump gave the Park Police permission to relax its rules about when and how its officers can initiate a car chase.

And while the change in policy has led to dozens of wide-ranging and often damaging police pursuits, which experts say stray far from law enforcement norms, members of Congress with jurisdiction over the National Park Service and Park Police said this week they were largely unaware of that trend.

The Trump administration in August 2025 issued an executive order aimed at addressing what it said was a “crime emergency” in D.C. As part of that directive, the president ordered the National Park Service to hire additional Park Police officers and “ensure enforcement of all applicable laws within their jurisdiction.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at the time the executive order handed the federal police force, charged with protecting national parks, with significant new authority to initiate car chases.

“I was shocked to find out when we were talking to [Park Police] that, you pull somebody over, and they just drive away and you can’t pursue them,” Burgum said. “We got that rule changed in 24 hours because of President Trump’s leadership.”

Previous Park Police guidelines for vehicular pursuits held that officers could only initiate a chase if a suspect is wanted for a violent felony offense, threats of violence or if they have committed a felony and possess a firearm. In other circumstances, officers needed to secure supervisory approval to engage in a car chase.

In the nearly one year since the Trump administration relaxed pursuit guidelines, Park Police officers have participated in dozens of car chases in D.C., including several that resulted in crashes and injuries.

According to statistics from Maryland law firm Joseph Greenwald & Laake, there were 28 federal police chases in the nation’s capital in the first month the new pursuit guidelines were in effect. Park Police officers were involved in 22 of those pursuits, and 18 resulted in crashes. All cases began as nonviolent traffic stops.

Since then, there have been several more high-profile chases involving Park Police units. In October 2025, a driver evading a traffic stop in D.C. led officers on a 35-mile pursuit on area highways. The chase tracked from the capital city all the way to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Park Police called off the pursuit without making an arrest.

In April, a Park Police officer who initiated a car chase with a suspect displaying fake tags crashed into another driver at an intersection. Both the officer and the driver, who was not involved with the pursuit, were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Tuesday’s chase began with reports of a stolen vehicle, a Park Police spokesperson told Courthouse News in a statement. Eyewitness video showed as many as six marked and unmarked police vehicles, as well as one motorcycle, racing up a crowded Connecticut Avenue at around 4 p.m. in the afternoon. One witness reported seeing as many as 20 Park Police vehicles involved in the pursuit.

Starting in D.C., the chase ended roughly 10 miles away when the suspect vehicle crashed at an intersection in Montgomery Country, Maryland. Park Police said four juvenile suspects were arrested at the scene.

“During the pursuit, there were minor collisions that occurred involving the suspect vehicle,” an agency spokesperson said. “No injuries were reported.”

Though Park Police has insisted it has confidence in its officers to enforce the law, experts say the agency’s “chase until the wheels fall off” policy granted by the Trump administration is a far cry from how most state and local police organizations approach vehicular pursuits.

“When you have ten units involved in a single pursuit, that says a whole lot about the policy right there,” said Dennis Kenney, a professor at the City University of New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “That’s no longer a pursuit, that’s a parade. That a pursuit like that would end in an accident is not surprising.”

In an interview with Courthouse News, Kenney explained police pursuit policy is typically designed to guide officer behavior. In initiating a car chase, a police officer has to make a split-second calculation about whether a suspect needs to be apprehended immediately.

“If the individual is fleeing an elementary school, then the need for apprehension is pretty high,” he said. “If they’re just driving with a broken taillight, then the need for apprehension is really low.”

Officers are expected to take into account the risks of engaging in a pursuit, said Kenney, and during a chase an uninvolved supervisor usually decides when to call it off. Most police departments also limit the number of units that can be actively engaged in a vehicular pursuit to just two — meaning Tuesday’s chase with U.S. Park Police featured roughly five times the number of police vehicles typically recommended for such a case.

Kenney said a string of police cars on the road during a high-speed pursuit greatly increases the danger to other drivers, which is why many agencies deliberately restrict how many vehicles are involved.

“When you yield for a police car … once it goes by, you assume it must be clear,” he said. “If you catch the second one, you’re pretty certain that it’s clear. Then the third one hits you.”

Kenney added that among police organizations there’s been a several decadeslong trend in tightening pursuit policies, standing in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s move to loosen criteria for Park Police to engage in car chases.

As a federal police force under the National Park Service, Congress oversees the U.S. Park Police. But lawmakers who sit on committees with jurisdiction over the agency told Courthouse News they weren’t aware of recent incidents stemming from Park Police chases in D.C.

Arkansas Representative Bruce Westerman, the Republican chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, declined to comment Wednesday on this week’s police chase or federal pursuit guidelines, saying he didn’t have all the details. But the lawmaker defended Park Police, saying they had been “maligned for a long time.”

“They suffered a lot in the previous administration,” said Westerman.

Maryland Senator Jamie Raskin, whose district includes Montgomery County, similarly said he hadn’t heard about the Park Police pursuit Tuesday and that he would work to get more information.

And New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich, the top Democrat on the Senate’s natural resources panel, also said he had no knowledge of the chase but added he was concerned about the Park Police’s policy for initiating car chases.

“Anytime where the public is put at risk, we need to make sure the guidelines are appropriate,” he told Courthouse News. “So, I’m happy to take a look at that.”

Heinrich declined to suggest any possible reforms to Park Police pursuit guidelines, however, pointing out he’d need to understand the “fact pattern” first.

Kenney said Wednesday that Congress could work to set “clear rules” for pursuits conducted by federal law enforcement writ large.

“If Congress is going to do something, they should set them not just for Park Police, but for any police, including Secret Service and others," Kenney said.

He suggested lawmakers follow the “general professional trend” under which police agencies only allow pursuits involving marked units, restrict the number of units involved, set rules on when chases must be discontinued and establish reporting requirements.

The U.S. Park Police Fraternal Order of Police — the union representing the National Park Service’s law enforcement branch — did not return a request for comment on the agency’s pursuit guidelines.

“Individuals who flee from law enforcement create dangerous situations that place officers, innocent bystanders and the community at risk,” a Park Police spokesperson said in a statement. “We have confidence in the professionalism, training and judgment of the men and women of the U.S. Park Police.”

Nearly a year after it surged federal agents, immigration officers and other law enforcement into Washington, D.C., the Trump administration has said it is planning once again to undertake a similar effort ahead of several months of major events planned for the country’s 250th birthday celebration.

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