It happened four times between Feb. 1 and March 21 of this year — a police pursuit of someone who ran from authorities ended with someone dying in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Flanked by grieving relatives of one such victim, Prince George’s County Council member Krystal Oriadha introduced a new bill she hopes will stop that from happening again.
Dubbed “Zoey’s Law,” the measure is named after 3-year-old Zoey Harrison, who was riding in a car that was hit by someone fleeing from District Heights and Capitol Heights police officers.
If passed, the bill would codify into law that police officers must cut off a chase unless it’s believed the driver committed a felony or violent misdemeanor, or that the person poses an imminent threat of death or serious injury to someone.
While it is a guideline that Prince George’s County police officers already abide by, municipal departments don’t all have the same restriction.
“We have to ask ourselves, what can we do to ensure that this never happens again?” Oriadha said.
Harrison’s family, including her siblings, parents, grandmother and other extended family members, joined Oriadha at a news conference Tuesday in Largo, Virginia. Those who spoke found it difficult not to break down and cry.
“Zoey lit up the room,” said Tanishia Harrison, the 3-year-old’s mother. “She was full of life, full of love, and she had this way of making everyone around her smile. Her laughter was like medicine.”
“What happened that day shattered our family. There’s no other way to say it,” she added. “We don’t wake up the same no more. We don’t go to sleep the same.”
Tanishia said in no way was the aim of the legislation to keep police officers from doing their jobs. Oriadha and Zoey’s family agreed the blame for the child’s death rests on the driver who fled from police — a driver who has yet to be charged.
For Oriadha, it’s about taking an internal policy that already exists for some officers and turning it into law. And she said she’s hoping municipalities will buy in and adopt the policy that county police already follow.
“This is not a ‘maybe it could happen.’ This is not a ‘what if it possibly happens,’” Oriadha said. “We are living right now through multiple tragic incidents where this has happened.”
That crash, and the pursuit that led to it, remain under investigation by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office of Independent Investigations.
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