© Motor Trend Staff
Washington DC police car crash 01
Last month, a curious news story bubbled up out of Washington D.C. by way of the city's local Fox news station: Two D.C. police cars had crashed into one another, allegedly after having raced each other down a city street. Thanks to one of the body cameras of the officers involved in these shenanigans, we now have a (slightly odd) view of what went down.
A quick recap on body cameras: They activate when something happens (or when manually turned on). In this case, that triggering something was the two Ford Police Interceptors crashing into one another. Thing is, the cameras also record the prior two minutes, albeit without sound, before activation, which is where the footage below comes from. In it, we get the point-of-view of the officer in the front-passenger seat (not the driver) of one of the involved police cars. As such, the view of the lens comes from about chest height and aimed somewhat skyward through the windshield.
Careful with your computer or phone volume, because the audio kicks on abruptly immediately following the impact, at which point we see the officer stumble out of the car and sprinkle some profanity in a mixture of shock and, probably, "oh poop!" concern.
The clip was released by the D.C. police, so jump to the 1:20 mark to skip the city's verbal and visual recap of the situation and see the in-car view of the incident. Again, because the body camera appears to be somewhere on the officer's torso, the view is awkward, and we only see the other police car enter the frame at the very end, as it appears to turn left in front of the police car our camera-wearing officer is seated in. The driver inexplicably drives straight into the other car's left side, turning it around and running both sedans off the road and into someone's front yard.
It seems everyone involved in this lapse in judgment is being investigated, with punishment forthcoming, up to and including people losing their jobs. Next to misusing police equipment, and that's putting things mildly, the cops are said to have torn down a surface street in excess of 60 mph, putting everyone nearby in danger (at the end of the clip, we can even see two folks walking their dog opposite the stumbling officer, assuredly dumbstruck by the crash they just witnessed). So, while it's amusing to see police idiocy rivaling that of the 1984 movie Police Academy, there's no ignoring the fact these officers put people in real danger while giving the world yet another lesson in why street racing is a terrible, awful, very bad idea.