I’m going to make a very embarrassing admission: I love watching police chases on TV. Maybe growing up in Los Angeles after the infamous Bronco chase taught me to enjoy watching these intense car chases on TV. When I lived in LA, they would break into local news or even programming to show the chase from helicopters. Now, you can watch the live stream on local news stations from anywhere, making it convenient for me to continue this odd obsession even while living in Texas.
It’s fun to watch these chases with my husband, who grew up in Kansas City, and have him quiz me on the geography. Where is Rancho Cucamonga? Where is Irvine? After some time, I realized that many of these chases ended up in the same area: Downey and Norwalk. At first, I thought it was a coincidence. But then, it became something more of a pattern. And, being in the line of work that I am, I felt the need to look into this (and apparently share it with you).
Some of this is, of course, due to geography. Downey and Norwalk are located where a number of major Los Angeles freeways collide. Downey is nestled in between I-5, I-605, I-105 and I-710. Norwalk sits in between I-5, I-605, and the 91 freeway, and is also where I-105 ends. So, hypothetically, if you started the chase in Boyle Heights (another popular location for police chases, but we will save that for another day) and took I-5 south, you would drive right through the northern part of Downey and Norwalk. While you are trying to evade arrest, changing highways isn’t a bad idea, so you might then jump on the I-605 southbound down to Long Beach. The Google Map below shows this convergence of freeways nicely.
But it is more than just the geography, as the demographics are at play here, too. Often times, these chases start because of car theft. Through the data we have available in CrimeRisk, I can see that motor vehicle thefts are more than twice the national average in Downey, and close to twice the national average in Norwalk. For all of the Los Angeles area, where the average is slightly more than national average, these two places are solidly in the top quarter for highest motor vehicle thefts. As any news broadcaster will remind you, car theft is often a crime of opportunity, and the offenders who end up on these chases often return to an area that they are familiar with. There are two maps below. The first shows total crime around Downey and Norwalk, and the second shows vehicle theft specifically. As you can see, Downey and Norwalk do not have the highest crime rates in the overall area, they are higher than the national average, and those higher than average crime rates could be contributing to police chases in the area.
Total Crime
Vehicle Theft
So, is there a correlation between car chases and geography? Quite possibly. For now, I’ll still be watching them when they come on. Want to watch, too? There are lots of police chase twitter accounts that retweet the live footage coverage so that you never miss a chase.
Recent Comments