I was looking through recent episodes of “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” and saw he did a segment that focused on a series I helped edit when I worked at the San Francisco Chronicle:

The award-winning Chronicle series looked at the phenomenon of police chases well beyond the borders of the Bay Area and confirmed it was a nationwide scandal. The story I helped edit involved Louisville, in which cops exacerbated a high-speed chase through the West End that led to the death of an innocent moped rider on the intersection pictured at the top of this post.

Click here to read that story: Thrown from his moped by a car fleeing police: One man’s death reflects a shocking disparity.

Click here to see the database the Chronicle constructed to show the prevalence of police chases throughout the country. There might be an incident in your area.

And click here to see the works that made the series a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2025.

The series and the “Last Week Tonight” segment also noted that police in general are more likely to continue chases through minority neighborhoods than they are through more affluent White areas.

Given the attention the story placed on Louisville, the lawsuits that followed and the added scrutiny placed on how police perform here, there certainly must have been a focused effort to ensure reckless driving cops are no longer on our streets, right?

In the early hours of Nov. 16, 2023, a Louisville Metro Police cruiser accelerated to 106 miles per hour before smashing into a Toyota sedan making a left turn across Preston Highway.

Though officer Caleb Hartin had been driving more than twice the speed limit, his emergency lights were not activated.

He was not involved in a pursuit, nor was he responding to an emergency.

The wreck pinned his partner in the crushed, smoldering cruiser for more than 40 minutes as emergency workers tried to extract her. The crash also seriously injured a woman in her 60s who was driving the sedan. …

One month after taking a plea deal on lessened charges that allowed him to avoid jail time if he commits no new offenses for two years, Hartin was offered a job by the University of Louisville Police Department, the armed police force tasked with keeping U of L faculty, staff, students and visitors safe.

Recent court records show Hartin making arrests and traffic stops both on and off-campus this year.

To quote John Oliver, that’s “absolute bullshit!”