The news that two television helicopters crashed while covering a police chase of a stolen car is pretty awful, particularly the audio and video now circling the Internet.

Christopher Jones, the man the police were chasing, isn’t the most sympathetic of characters. But I find it pretty troubling that the police are now looking to charge him with the deaths of the journalists in the helicopters.

Let’s say someone watching the helicopter crash on TV had a heart attack and died. Could Jones then be charged with that death, too?

I suppose much depends on the charge. But anything beyond involuntary manslaughter or criminal recklessness seems inappropriate, here. It strains credulity to say that a mid-air news helicopter collision is a foreseeable consequence of fleeing the police.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 1:18 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.