A vehicle pursued by San Francisco police hit the car Ciara Keegan was driving head-on on Dec. 7 in Oakland.
Ciara Keegan’s car was totaled in a head-on collision with a vehicle being chased by San Francisco police.
On the afternoon of Dec. 7, Ciara Keegan left her job in the East Bay and began the drive home to San Francisco. She was talking to her boyfriend on her car’s speakerphone, making dinner plans, when she saw a black Nissan Infiniti heading straight for her. The car skidded out of its lane and hit her Honda CRV head-on.
The impact was terrifying. Images posted on social media by a passerby showed the remains of the two cars, with wreckage spread across the road, glass and debris everywhere.
Miraculously, Keegan was able to walk away from her totaled car. Officers from the San Francisco Police Department sat her in the back of a cruiser to wait for an ambulance. The vehicle that hit her began smoking and making popping noises nearby. Soon, it burst into flames.
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“Keegan appeared to not only be in discomfort, but serious pain as she wrapped her arms around herself and continued to cry and yell in pain,” the police report said. She was transported to Highland Hospital, Oakland’s primary trauma center.
The driver who’d hit Keegan was fleeing officers who started the pursuit in San Francisco’s Chinatown after a man in a cell phone repair shop was mugged at gunpoint for his Louis Vuitton bag. When police officers spotted a vehicle matching the description of the suspect’s heading toward the highway, they rolled out spike strips near Folsom and First streets, hoping to shred the car’s tires and bring it to a stop. Despite calls over the radio that the strips had resulted in a “good spike,” the car continued onto the Bay Bridge, and according to the police report, “reached speeds of 80 miles per hour on a rainy day, with heavily congested traffic conditions.”
When the car finally pulled off the highway in West Oakland, the driver lost control and hit Keegan’s vehicle.
Keegan’s recovery after the crash was slow, she told me over the phone three months after the incident. She stayed at her parents’ house for a week, so sore that she needed help doing basic tasks like getting dressed.
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While housebound, she started seeing ads for Proposition E, a San Francisco ballot measure that voters approved in the March election. Prop. E allows the San Francisco Police Department to, among other things, pursue vehicles when people are suspected of committing misdemeanors, not just felonies like armed robbery.
Prop. E’s passage has left Keegan shaken, realizing that under this measure, the types of pursuits that lead to her injuries could happen more frequently. Indeed, her crash was not an anomaly; of the 150 police pursuits from 2018 to 2023 in San Francisco, 38% ended in a collision and 15% resulted in people getting hurt. A recent investigation into police pursuits nationwide by the Chronicle showed that the majority of victims injured were not fleeing drivers.
If Prop. E is rolled out carelessly, more pedestrians and drivers like Keegan could be injured or killed during high-speed police chases. So, what should police officers do when they witness an armed robbery and see suspects drive away?
Just because the department has authorization to institute more chases doesn’t mean it should not be judicious in expanding their use. For example, though it wasn’t specified in the measure, Mayor London Breed has suggested sticking to nighttime pursuits when streets are less crowded.
While that’s likely less risky than a chase at 2 p.m. on a weekday, it’s not a failsafe. Spike strips, often touted as an alternative to chases, are not always effective. Prop. E gives the police department permission to use drones, they’re not a viable option for pursuits.
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The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office uses StarChase, a GPS tracker inside a deodorant-sized projectile with an industrial-strength adhesive on one end that can stick to the bumper of a fleeing vehicle. While strict safeguards must be established to prevent misuse of their surveillance capabilities, studies of these GPS devices in several urban areas show they have the potential to assist law enforcement in recovering stolen vehicles and apprehending suspects without relying on car chases.
The San Francisco Police Department has a responsibility to explore new options given its history of participating in dangerous and sometimes deadly pursuits. It’s indisputably safer to track a vehicle from a distance than flying through dense city streets at high speeds, and it gives officers time to plan their next move, something lacking during the adrenaline-pumping chaos of a police chase.
Putting people heading home from work at risk is not acceptable collateral damage.
In the months since the collision, Keegan has tried to get her life back to normal, but the trauma of the incident lingers. It took her a month before she felt comfortable enough to start driving to work again.
“I’m a lot more anxious on the road now,” she told me. “There’s been a few times where I have tried to go to work, and I just can’t. It’s still really hard. I’m not recovered from it.”
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Her story could be a lesson for what’s in store for residents if the city rolls out new voter-approved policies carelessly.
“I think people haven’t thought through the implications of this,” Keegan told me. “They’re throwing the kitchen sink at these problems, and I think we’ll come to regret it.”
Reach Nuala Bishari: nuala.bishari@sfchronicle.com
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