DC Park Police Had Fun On Super Cool High-Speed Car Chase. Too Bad It Killed A Guy.
Would you believe that this was caused by a Trump rule change? Of course you would.
Every year, around 400 to 500 people are killed in high speed police chases — about a third of them innocent bystanders. This isn’t too surprising, as around 30 to 45 percent of these chases culminate in a crash. The vast majority of these pursuits are not triggered by violent crimes, but by traffic violations and property offenses like stolen cars, and when I say the vast majority, I’m talking like 90 percent of the time.
It’s pretty horrifying to think of one’s friend or family member being killed because the police were mad that someone ran a damned red light. That is why, a few years back, Washington DC included a ban on police chases for non-violent crimes in the DC Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022.
But there was one big problem with that law — police chases make police officers feel like super cool action movie badasses, and people like to watch them, as evidenced by the existence of Pluto TV’s dedicated “Car Chases” channel. So, balancing the needs of people who don’t want to die versus people who like cool action movie stuff, Donald Trump signed an executive order in August 2025 allowing Park Police to engage in high speed chases for any reason they feel.
How’s that been going?
Not great! At least not great for 46-year-old delivery driver Nolberto Meza, who was struck dead when a car being pursued by Park Police this past weekend crashed into his moped.
Meza, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela who was just minding his own damn business trying to do his job and deliver some food, was killed while Park Police were chasing down an allegedly stolen Honda Accord, something they would have been prevented from doing under the previous rule. Reports say that his family back in Venezuela is now “looking for answers,” but there really aren’t any beyond “it was real fun for police officers, who probably could have solved ‘the case’ by some other, less deadly means, given all the surveillance infrastructure available to them.”
For what it’s worth, 80 percent of drivers have comprehensive vehicle insurance, which means that if their car is stolen, they will be reimbursed.
As Judd Legum at Popular Information notes, after Trump initially changed the rule, he got heaps of praise from Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, who was just so goll darn happy that police officers could once again have “so much fun” chasing the “bad guys” who, um, need to get a tail light replaced or something.
During a Cabinet meeting, he said:
“On a lighter note for everybody here, one of the rules that under President Trump we were able to change for the US Park Police was they could do a pursuit. I was shocked to find out when we were talking to him, like, ‘Oh, you pull somebody over and they just drive away and you can't pursue them.’ I mean, like — and they said, ‘no, we can't.’ I said, ‘Oh, rules’ — we got that rule changed in 24 hours because of President Trump's leadership. The next night, they had so much fun. They pulled people over, they started to take off, they chased them, they stopped them. And then the bad guys, some of these guys were in cars that had stolen plates. So they'd take the plate off, they steal them off somebody else's car. They know the plate doesn't match, they know they're doing something. The bad guys in the car said you're not supposed to chase us, like, you're breaking the rules. The bad guys are telling us to — ‘No, no, we're back in action.’ So it's like — and so the morale is high. They all wanted to say ‘thank you’ to you.”
I would just like to put it out there that people who say “bad guys” should not be in charge of anything other than their own action figures.
This is not the first time since the rule change that Park Police have killed someone. Back in March, some “officers chased the driver of a stolen car … that ended when the vehicle struck a tree and burst into flames, killing 18-year-old Josue Chavez.”
Charges were initially filed against the 24-year-old and 19-year-old alleged car thieves, but have since been dropped. Nothing seems to be known about the officers involved yet, but it seems likely that they are reveling in what super cool badasses they are.
Want to donate to us but not to Substack? Click here or join our Patreon!
That’s just in DC, by the way. In addition to Nolberto Meza, several others have been killed in police car chases in recent days. Remeious Washington, 48, of Warren, Michigan, was killed last week when police saw a bunch of teenagers in a car, some of whom were wearing ski masks, and attempted to pull them over for a traffic stop. They didn’t pull over and so police chased them until they ultimately crashed into Washington’s car. The driver of the car, a 17-year-old, is being charged with felony murder, while the other kids in the car, ages 11-17, have been charged with receiving and concealing a motor vehicle, possession of burglary tools and possession with intent to steal, and resisting and obstructing.
That did not have to happen, either. As far as the police knew at the time, their only crime was sitting in a car, wearing ski masks — and while that may have been suspicious-seeming, it does not rise to the level of necessitating a high-speed chase.
“We must hold individuals accountable when their choices break the law, and they flee from authorities, and it leads to such devastating consequences,” Warren Police Commissioner Eric Hawkins had the gall to say. But there wouldn’t have been those “devastating consequences” had the police not engaged in a high speed chase for no damn reason.
In Columbia, South Carolina, 74-year-old Frankie Doctor was killed in a police chase when police suspected him of stealing a vehicle. While being pursued, Doctor drove into another vehicle, the driver of which is now in the hospital.
It’s not good to steal a car. We don’t want people stealing cars. But what is worse? A car being stolen or a person being killed, because I am going to go with the latter, even if that person is the driver themselves, because stealing a car is not a capital crime. There is not a person on earth who, upon losing a loved one in a police chase, is going to say “Well, I sure am sad about my kid dying, but at least the Honda Accord is okay.”
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
This is America.
We don't respect human life here.
Life is cheap. Disposable.
A resource.
Die because the police idolized the villain Dirty Harry?
Fuck you.
Religious people forced you to keep a dead child until Sepsis?
Fuck you.
Going to elementary school and meet a school shooter?
Suck it, kid.
Can't afford your cancer treatments?
Haha... fuck you.
Fleeing violence in your home funded by American drug money?
America doesn't care.
We are a cruel and violent land.
Life is replaceable. A resource.
We don't cry over a broken phone.
We get a new one.
Consumerism.
The police are here to protect property, mostly rich people's property. Not life. Not justice. PROPERTY. So none of this is a surprise. They were ALWAYS about property. The literal original cops were runaway slave catchers, BECAUSE PROPERTY OF RICH PEOPLE.