There are few instances where police must weigh risk versus reward more than with high-speed pursuits. For King County, in the battle between public safety and crime reduction, the former ideal wins more than one-third of the time.

“Sometimes the risk outweighs the value of continuing a pursuit,” said Covington Police Chief Kevin Klason. “…There’s always another day.”

According to the King County Sheriff Office’s pursuit review database, officers terminated pursuit of eluding vehicles 36 percent of the time over the last three years. While that doesn’t mean everyone who runs from the law gets away scot-free, Klason said there are some people who know they can bypass the directive of a police siren and flashing lights by not stopping.

“Career criminals are very well aware of that,” he said.

Instances of prolonged police chases are uncommon in King County. The Sheriff’s Office reported 368 pursuit incidents from January 2012-15. A high majority of those pursuits, 88 percent, lasted fewer than five miles — 64 percent less than two miles. The pursuits end for a variety of reasons, but the most likely result was collision (78). Among the reasons officers terminated the pursuit, the most frequent was “danger outweighed need to apprehend” (50), followed by “violation did not warrant risk of pursuit” (41) and “officer lost sight of suspect vehicle” (33).

The database lists only one fatality from pursuits over the last three years. On Sept. 30, 2014, a sheriff’s deputy engaged in a three-minute pursuit with a vehicle wanted in connection with a shoplifting incident earlier in the day in Covington. The chase reportedly reached speeds up to 80 or 90 mph before the suspect vehicle crashed into a pickup truck on the 32800 block of Southeast Auburn Black Diamond Road. The suspect was killed in the crash, and three others were injured — including the pickup truck driver who sustained a broken leg.

Even more recently, on the night of Jan. 16, a SeaTac deputy chased an allegedly stolen vehicle for approximately 90 seconds, before the suspect collided with another vehicle in Des Moines. The lone occupant of the stolen car fled on foot and escaped, but the male driver of the other vehicle, which was also occupied by two children, had serious injuries and was transported to the hospital.

The King County Sheriff’s Office protocol gives officers flexibility to terminate any pursuit that makes the deputy feel uncomfortable. Termination of a chase comes without repercussions based on the county’s pursuit policy in the general orders manual. Any identifying information a deputy obtains is broadcast by 911 communications to other agencies that could reengage in catching the alleged criminal.

Sgt. DB Gates, spokeswoman for the King County Sheriff’s Office, said a supervisor terminates chases a majority of the time, though there are no stats in the database that track supervisors’ interventions.

Gates said the policy is clear for supervisors that if the pursuing officer is unable to provide dispatch information about what is going on – including location, direction of pursuit, suspect vehicle description, speeds and the nature of offense — that the pursuit must automatically be terminated.

“I think our pursuit policy stands up,” Gates said. “We are allowed to pursue in lots of situations. I don’t think the bad guys are thinking they are getting away from us, that we are backing off.”

Much like the protocols in King County, supervisors with the Washington State Patrol are given the ability to call for termination of a pursuit at any time. Like in other jurisdictions, patroller’s consider factors that include the suspect’s driving recklessness, traffic conditions, weather conditions and the alleged offense that could ultimately be charged.

“It becomes very dangerous very quickly,” said Trooper Dominic Ledesma. “You have to weigh the options.”

Ledesma said terminating a pursuit sometimes means turning off the sirens and continuing vigilance at a steady pace. The vehicle may be found abandoned later on down the road. Ledesma said it’s been “a couple years” since his last pursuit.

“Usually pursuits don’t last that long,” he said. “It’s very, very short… Rarely do we have pursuits that go on for miles and miles and miles.”

High speed pursuits have evolved over the years, as costly pursuit-related lawsuits pushed municipalities to create formalized guidelines.

Beyond the guidelines, in King County, officers go through an emergency vehicle operations course every two years, testing reverse driving and emergency maneuvers through a pursuit course.

According to the database, deputies aborted pursuits in 132 of the 368 instances. A majority of the reasons for initiating the pursuit were for suspicion of crime (171), DUI/reckless driving (145) and suspicious circumstances (32). An accident occurred during the pursuit 42 percent of the time. In-car cameras were not used in 99 percent of the cases.

Gates remembers making the choice not to chase a speeding vehicle driving on the shoulder of I-5 through the maze of moderately heavy traffic back in the early 1990s. Rather than chase, she turned off her siren and continued on her way home, which happened to be the same direction as the speeding car. About a mile later she found the vehicle had crashed and, even more surprisingly, she found a man who had been kidnapped in the trunk splayed out on the street after the trunk sprang open.

“Turns out he’d been kidnapped from a parking garage downtown,” Gates said. “You never really know what you’re dealing with.”

Cases like Gates’, along with the 1980 cult classic movie “Blues Brothers,” where dozens of police cruisers speed through a mall and around the city of Chicago for a red light and driving with a suspended license violations, are anything but the norm. But the likelihood of a chase on a simple citation is even further from reality in the city of Seattle. The Seattle Police Department tells officers to only pursue for robberies, murders or felony level assaults — never for any traffic crime or misdemeanor. During pursuits, the officer must also be sure the person who committed the crime is actually in the car.

“We do not pursue,” said Detective Drew Fowler, Seattle Police spokesman. “We are ordered to pull over, turn off our lights immediately and write what we observed.”

Fowler agrees with the standard, saying the risk of injuring an innocent person is not worth the reward — especially for relatively minor traffic infractions.

“The reality is that the suspect, if we are chasing them and they continue to drive erratically and dangerously, they have turned themselves into a 2-ton missile that is guided probably by poor decision making,” he said. “It is a huge risk we take with the suspect, the officer and the public at large.”

Fowler said he doesn’t know if it’s common knowledge that Seattle officers won’t pursue small crimes.

“The huge majority of people in Seattle are law abiding, normal people,” Fowler said. “If they are getting pulled over for speeding or a traffic violation, they generally might know they are in the wrong.”

But this idea that police count on people making the safe, appropriate response to being pulled over, while, ironically, those who disregard the rules could face no consequences, leads to a fairly obvious question: Why should anyone ever stop for a simple driving infraction?

Ziad Youssef, a traffic defense attorney in Bellingham for 11 years, said about half of his attempt to elude cases end in a serious accident. Beyond that, endangering another person on the road adds an automatic one year enhancement of jail time. Meanwhile, a first-offense reckless driving charge maxes out at 90 days in jail.

“It’s absolutely not worth it,” Youssef said. “My clients would take it all back.”

Youssef estimated that one out of 10 of his clients tells a story of getting away from police. Not all of those stories would necessarily be truthful or even involve eluding police. But getting away short-term doesn’t mean police stop searching.

“Getting away means the officer has your license plate,” he said.

Youssef said most people who flee have warrants out or are felons, but occasionally someone is simply caught up in an adrenaline rush or is a young driver who fears explaining a speeding ticket to his or her parents. He said most people don’t run from cops for a reason – and it doesn’t matter if they won’t get chased.

“I think that’s because most everybody has respect for the rules of the road,” he said.

Generally, people who try to flee are desperate.

“They are really dangerous people,” he said. “They are going to do it whether there is a policy or not.”