Santa Cruz Police Chief Pursued in High-Speed Chase in Citizens' Academy

Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Vogel was stopped at gunpoint this week after leading pursuers on a high-speed, high-risk car chase near the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

OK, so the guns were orange and made of plastic.

This was one of the more interesting sessions of the department's Citizens' Police Academy, a 10-week course that teaches the community about the behind-the-scenes life of a police officer.

The course includes classwork and several field days like this one, where students got to drive police cars, chase suspects, search them at gunpoint and try to keep a possibly explosive and fatal situation under control.

"It's one of the hardest things an officer does," said Deputy Chief Steve Clark, who, with his hat on backwards, played a great bad guy. See video here.

Officers spend 24 hours just learning how to stop a car and get a suspect out peacefully. Even though this was just an exercise, the tension was still thick and students understood quickly that in the real world, one false move and an officer can get shot, stabbed, pricked by an infected needle or suffer any number of deadly injuries.

Not to mention, they can get killed or injured chasing a suspect.

"We used to call these high-speed chases," said Sgt. Mike Harms, the community services officer in charge of the class. "Now we call them high-risk chases. We used to just rush in and try to catch a suspect. But we found that people die that way."

A car chase is like the roller coaster in a good cop movie – it's fun and gets the viewers' hearts racing. But in real life, there are no rails to guide the action and that train could take a deadly turn.

Decisions already made at high speed go into hyperdrive traveling at 80 m.p.h. You want to follow, but not so closely that if someone stops you will hit them. You don't want to endanger passersby or other drivers. Your first priority is to protect the public, but if your suspect is a drug-addled, gun-carrying maniac, how do you stop him without causing harm?

Officers learn strict forms about how to make the stop, how to ensure that the suspect will move in ways that will keep things safe. We practiced them in the Boardwalk parking lots, but the biggest lesson was that no matter how tightly you follow the rules, a criminal's job is to find ways to break them and beat you.

They might stop their car, wait for you to get out and then speed off. They can hide a gun or knife, ready to use it when you least expect it. They can have someone hiding in the trunk, ready to ambush you.

We saw examples of all of these and as much fun as it is to play police and drive fast with lights and siren running, we saw too that in the real world there is no director yelling "Cut!" when you make a mistake.

An error here costs a life and the tension over a few minutes of a police stop is more than most people feel in a lifetime.