High-Speed Chase Ends on Dallas Love Field Runway

By Megan Breckenridge, Staff Writer
SULLO & SULLO, LLP

DALLAS—An hour-long police chase late last month ended in the arrest of a suspect wanted in connection with several robberies in the Dallas area. Michael Lawrence Brown, 46, was taken into custody next to one of Love Field airport’s busiest runways after leading police on a high-speed chase through the city.

Police said that a gray Chevy pickup, which had been stolen at knifepoint from the Sheraton Hotel in Fort Worth, was spotted at an apartment complex in the area of Preston Road and Belt Line Road in north Dallas around 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 19. This started a chase that ran down the service roads of Central Expressway.

After heading through neighborhoods and even traveling south into the downtown area, Brown turned the pickup truck northbound and wound up at Love Field.

With no other way to go, he easily smashed through a security gate off of Aviation Place and found himself on the tarmac not far from nine Southwest passenger jets. But he didn’t stop there: Brown drove east over an active runway (31R) before turning and continuing up the taxiway. He crossed Runway 18 and was boxed in by four cruisers and an unmarked police truck, then was forced onto the grass north of Runway 18 in between the taxiway and Runway 13L. One officer used a pit maneuver to force the truck into a spin, and the chase was over.

In the wake of this dramatic pursuit, the Dallas Police Department has put the entire chase under review. It has been noted that officers had multiple opportunities to bring the chase to an end before Brown reached the airport, opting not to use the pit maneuver on two separate occasions, since it violated the department’s new chase policy. But a Dallas police car ended the chase with a pit maneuver, ramming the stolen truck and forcing it to stop, which the department contends was in response to "extenuating circumstances".

Also under scrutiny are the seemingly thin defenses for Love Field, which have raised concerns that vehicle driver with more mayhem in mind than simply avoiding law enforcement could mimic the move. But officials declined to comment on possible changes or improvements to the current airport design, because "if [they] talk about [their] security program, it ceases to be a security program."