Demolition Derby: Cops Crash Their Squad Cars In A High-Speed Chase … In A Park!
Two NYPD officers smashed their patrol cars during a chase inside Flushing Meadows Corona Park on Monday, sending four officers to the hospital — raising questions about the department’s policy about high-speed pursuits.
According to police, the officers from the 110th Precinct were responding to a 911 call about shots fired around 5 p.m. near the 111th Street entrance to Flushing Meadows Corona Park, the same park where an officer drove over and killed a sleeping man last year.
The arriving officers on Monday said they found a teenager with slash wounds consistent with a machete who said his shoes, sweatshirt, and backpack were taken by a machete-wielding man and other men with guns.
What happened next is still murky. According to a police spokesperson who declined to provide a name, a different person inside the park told cops that they had seen a moped driver operating the vehicle “recklessly” — and that that person was “possibly involved” in the robbery and machete incident.
That possible involvement gave cops cause to begin a high-speed the suspect through the park. Cops said the moped rider “refused to stop, fled from police, and lost control of the moped, causing it to fall to the ground.”
That’s when one cop “swerved” one of the squad cars “to avoid the moped” and collided with another officer’s car. Neither police vehicle made contact with the moped or moped operator, police said.
The moped driver fled and cops chased, eventually taking into custody a 16-year-old and a knife, cops said — though not a machete. And cops said the moped driver was not involved in the robbery that prompted the chase. He was charged with reckless endangerment, resisting arrest and carrying a knife.
This dangerous pursuit — of the wrong suspect — is exactly what the NYPD’s current high-speed chase policy is intended to prevent.
Former Mayor Eric Adams loosened the policies around such chases, with support from NYPD brass.
“People thinking they can take off on us — those days are over,” then-Chief of Patrol John Chell told The City Reporter after the outlet identified 625 high-speed chases in the first six months of 2023 — more than the number for the previous five years combined.
A subsequent study of 2,278 chases under the Adams administration found that around one-quarter ended in injury or property, including a handful of high-profile fatalities. That study did not include the December 2024 death of cyclist Amanda Servedio, who was struck and killed in Astoria by a burglary suspect who was fleeing a police chase.
Months later, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch raised the bar for what justifies a high-speed chase to explicitly discourage pursuits around school, parks and playgrounds. As a result, there was an 85-percent decline in high-speed chases over the first three months of 2025.
But the current policy still encourages chases in response to reports of serious or violent crimes, such as the 911 call about shots fired to which officers responded on Monday before their spectacular crash.
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