The Arkansas State Police is being sued by a driver for an incident that happened in July 2020. The suit claims the police used deadly force by performing a PIT maneuver as the driver was attempting to find a safe place to pull over.
The driver, Janice Harper, was pregnant at the time of the incident and was caught going 84 mph (135 km/h) on a section of Highway 67/167, reports local NBC affiliate KARK. Dashcam footage from Corporal Rodney Dunn’s police car shows Harper slowing down and using her hazard lights.
In the video, following the incident, she can be heard explaining that she was looking for a safe place to pull over, as she was on a section of highway with a narrow shoulder. In the same video, Corporal Dunn explains that she was required to pull over, even though Arkansas’ Driver License Study Guide writes that drivers are allowed to indicate their intention to pull over by flashing their hazards and waiting for a safe place to stop.
Read More: Questions Raised After Police Trooper Performs Deadly 109 MPH PIT Maneuver
Corporal Dunn, though, pulled up alongside the driver with his sirens on, then turned into Harper’s rear quarter panel, causing her to pull hard to the left, across three lanes of traffic and into the concrete median, whereupon her vehicle turned over and ended up on its roof.
“In my head, I was going to lose the baby,” Harper told Fox16. Harper’s lawyer, Andrew Norwood, argues that Corporal Dunn’s actions qualify as a use of “deadly force.”
“There was a less dangerous and more safe avenue that could have been taken before flipping her vehicle and making it bounce off a concrete barrier going 60 miles an hour,” Norwood told Fox.
Arkansas State Police have come under fire for their use of the PIT maneuver recently. An investigation by KARK revealed that between 2017 and 2020, officers used the maneuver 306 times and half of those took place in 2020. The known risk of the maneuver has caused several law enforcement agencies to put strict limits on PIT maneuver’s use and has led some to use it only when the use of deadly force is warranted. Arkansas Senator Bob Ballinger echoed that sentiment to Fox.
“At this point I don’t know if State Police is not doing everything correct,” he said. “At the same time we don’t want to kill them for running a red light or for fleeing for that matter if we can avoid doing that.”
For Harper, who had her car flipped for going 14 mph over the speed and then trying to pull over in a way that was safer for both her and the corporal, that scenario may feel more than academic.
“What if I had kids in the car? He wouldn’t have known,” Harper said. “Did that matter? What was going through his head? What made him think this was okay?”