Two night ago I witnessed a movie-style car-chase in Helsinki. It all started at around 10 pm in the evening. I was running from Tapiola towards the city and noticed while crossing Ring I that there was a cop car trying to stop an old rear-wheel drive Escort. Something strange happened: the Escort didn’t stop but speeded on! Wow! An old Escort is not a quick car and in difficult conditions (ice & snow) it must have been difficult to drive.<\/p>\n
Ok, I see a second cop car coming from Espoo. Escort turns towards Munkkiniemi and soon there are two cops behind it: a Mondeo and a Transit. The chase goes on. I do my best and try to follow. I want to see when cops pull the Escort to the side. But to my surprise the chase doesn’t stop. Lights disappear, and I can only hear sirens in the distance.<\/p>\n
I continue towards Lauttasaari thinking what I’d do if I were the escape driver. Yes, I’d probably go down Mecheleninkatu towards Ruoholahti and continue L\u00e4nsiv\u00e4yl\u00e4 back to Espoo. Which is what the Escort driver does as well. On a bridge towards Lauttasaari I can hear & see & witness everything again. Escord climbs up from the city to L\u00e4nsiv\u00e4yl\u00e4, Mondeo tallying close behind. Lots of siren sound. More cops following. My scene is perfect: I can see like 5 km of L\u00e4nsiv\u00e4yl\u00e4 from Helsinki to Keilaniemi, all way long.<\/p>\n
But how many cops are there! One aften another new cop cars climb up from Ruoholahti to L\u00e4nsiv\u00e4yl\u00e4. I try to keep record on them. Jesus! More than 10 cop cars chasing one filthy old Escord, which probably can not technically go faster than 140 km\/h. Like 2 minutes after the Escort is gone new cop cars appear. Lights on, sirens on, going fast.<\/p>\n
The next day I read from the paper that the Escort was bumbed towards snow just a couple of kilometres from where I saw them disappear into Espoo. It was questioned why they needed so many cop cars (officially 14 total) to chase one dirty Escort with a 20-year-old boy & girl driving away. I bet the cop didn’t consider his answer for too long. He replied: “If there’s a chase going on [announced on police radio] it isn’t that difficult to get volunteers to chase.”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two night ago I witnessed a movie-style car-chase in Helsinki. It all started at around 10 pm in the evening. I was running from Tapiola towards the city and noticed while crossing Ring I that there was a cop car trying to stop an old rear-wheel drive Escort. Something strange happened: the Escort didn’t stop … Continue reading “Chase is better than the catch”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cars","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1868,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/1868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.valimaki.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}