Rachel Ellen Ondersma, a 17-year-old high school senior, was stopped by the state police in Grand Rapids, Mich., early on the morning of Nov. 14, 1998. She had been driving erratically. When she failed a Breathalyzer test, the cops placed her under arrest.
An officer cuffed the girl's hands behind her, put her in the back seat of a police cruiser and locked the doors, leaving her alone. What happened after that was captured on a video camera mounted inside the vehicle. And while it would eventually be shown on the Fox television program ''World's Wackiest Police Videos,'' it was not funny.
The video camera showed a clear view through the windshield of the police cruiser. The microphone picked up the sound of Ms. Ondersma sobbing, and then the clink of the handcuffs as she began maneuvering to free herself. She apparently stepped through her arms so that her hands, still cuffed, were in front of her. She then climbed into the front seat of the cruiser, slid behind the wheel and started the engine. As officers shouted, ''Hey! Stop!,'' she roared off.
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With several cars chasing her, the drunken teen-ager roared onto a freeway, where she was clocked at speeds that reached 80 miles per hour. At least two police cars got into the lane in front of her and slowed down while another closed in from the right. ''Oh no!'' cried Ms. Ondersma as she crashed into a concrete median on her left. She seemed boxed in. The video showed cops leaping from their cars and heading toward her.
Ms. Ondersma threw the cruiser into reverse, backed up, then lurched forward, plowing into one of the police cars. At that point gunfire can be heard as cops began shooting out her tires. The teen-ager would not stop. She backed up, then lurched forward again, hitting the cop car one more time. An officer had to leap out of the way to keep from being struck.
Somehow Ms. Ondersma, a clear and potentially fatal threat to anyone on the highway, managed yet again to get away. But this time, with at least two tires flat, she could no longer control the vehicle. She crashed into another concrete divider and finally was surrounded.
For me the most astonishing part of the video came next. Ms. Ondersma, upset, was pulled from the cruiser. She was not treated roughly. There was no cursing by the police, no ranting and raving, no evidence that the cops were particularly upset at all. One officer said to Ms. Ondersma: ''Calm down, all right? I think you've caused enough trouble for today.''
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