Sure, a Hollywood-style car chase is incredibly dangerous, and I never understood why they were tolerated as much as they were. (I mean, other than the obvious explanation that our culture of policing taught that effective policing required an indiscriminate and overwhelming show force and authority.) But some municipalities draw different lines such that once a suspect gets into a car, that's often the end of any pursuit, whether the suspect was even aware of being pursued.
People complain about, e.g., "chilling effects" on legitimate free speech rights stemming from policies designed to restrain unprotected speech. Well, all manner of policies can have "chilling effects", sweeping more broadly in practice than they were intended. Such effects are modulated by various norms. In San Francisco a growing chorus of people (across the political and social spectrum) are complaining about cops failing in an unprecedented manner to investigate, detain, arrest, or otherwise enforce laws as dictated by formal policies (i.e. excluding cases where city policy clearly required abstention), and to the extent it's true (some of it is demonstrably true), part of that is because the political culture in SF causes police to be excessively risk-averse regarding modern reform policies. If you follow seemingly inconspicuously, or your pursuit nominally meets policy but things go sideways, that's your job on the line, and cops enjoy much less deference administratively than in other cities--certainly the DA, but even the Mayor and Police Chief in SF are less tolerant of cops who create controversy, whether or not negligent.) The situation in Chicago might be similar to some extent, especially as of the past couple years.
The new equilibrium might still be preferable, or if not there may be ways to reach a better equilibrium without revisiting sins of the past, but this sub-thread began from you saying that you didn't believe a poster who claimed a police officer deliberately abstained from pursuing a suspect getting away by car. You apparently believed such events are so rare as to be fictitious. But they absolutely do occur, with increasing frequency, and in no small degree driven by changes in formal policy. Maybe the poster is being misleading, but on its face nothing about it seems implausible; quite the contrary.
