Police chases are, statistically, extremely dangerous. According to a study published by the New York State Attorney General’s office in June, 30 percent of pursuits nationwide end in a crash, and nine percent result in some level of injury, whether that be to the suspect, the police, or a bystander. So departments have increasingly adopted “grappler” tools to end chases before tragedy strikes. One Michigan driver learned the hard way how much damage can be done if you try to flee after being grappled —especially if your car has a torsion beam rear end.
The Grappler Police Bumper made waves on its debut in 2018 as a safer, more straightforward way to end police pursuits without endangering bystanders or involved parties. It’s a device deployed from the front of a police car’s bumper that holds out a nylon net. All a user has to do is touch the net to the rear wheel of the car in front, and the nylon gets entangled in the wheel. One piece of the nylon stays attached to the cruiser, allowing the officer to, in essence, “rope in” the captured car by slamming on the brakes, bringing both vehicles to a stop. The device’s inventor, Leonard Stock, told Fox 10 Phoenix in 2023 that he came up with the idea in a dream.
Unsurprisingly, use of the Grappler has spread across the country to dozens of law enforcement agencies. One such agency is the Livonia Police Department in Michigan, which used the tool to great effect on Thursday against a second-generation Chevy Cruze stolen out of Dearborn. Video from onboard the pursuing cop car shows a textbook capture on Interstate 96, but the driver of the Cruze couldn’t seem to accept defeat. Instead, they tried three times to tug their way out of the nylon. On the third tug, disaster struck. Watch for yourself:
In a statement published to Facebook, the department said it called on the assistance of the Michigan State Police to help them out with the fleeing Cruze, which had allegedly been identified as stolen. Here’s what else the agency had to say:
In this case, after being stopped, the driver repeatedly attempted to break free by reversing and then accelerating forward. However, the Grappler held firm and because of the driver’s own actions, the vehicle’s rear axle was ripped off, permanently disabling the car. This is not typical with Grappler deployments and was solely the result of the driver’s reckless attempts to escape.
The 27-year-old male driver from Brighton, along with two female passengers, a 32-year-old from Wayne and a 31-year-old from Livonia, were all arrested and taken into custody without further incident. Thankfully, no injuries were reported.
What Exactly Happened Here?
The Chevy Cruze uses a torsion beam rear suspension. Also known as a twist beam, it’s a common piece of design in modern, front-wheel drive economy cars that uses a transversely positioned metal beam to hold the wheels, tires, and brakes to the car, via just two mounting points on a set of trailing arms linked by the twist beam. Like most other modern suspension designs, the suspension includes a shock and spring per wheel (the former is bolted to the body, and the latter sits pressed between the body and the torsion beam spring perch).
Torsion beams are generally panned by enthusiasts, as they can’t provide the same articulation or refinement as a true independent suspension. But they have exceptional benefits. Torsion beams are simple to work on and cheap to produce, which is why you see them on so many everyday, low-cost cars. And they still provide some level of wheel independence, as the beam can twist when one wheel encounters a bump, so as not to upset the other (hence the “torsion” in torsion beam). But because the semi-independent suspension is only bolted down in two spots (plus the shocks, though those are much weaker attachments), they are particularly susceptible to being ripped out when encountering a Grappler tool. At least, when the driver really forces the issue.
That’s exactly what happened here. On that third tug, the Grappler held onto the left wheel, which stayed attached to the hub, which was connected to the trailing arm, which was connected to the torsion beam that connected to the other trailing arm and wheel. Ultimately, the two lowly bolts holding the suspension to the unibody sheared away, and everything else attached to the beam, including the shocks, the brakes, and the right wheel—came with it. The springs, meanwhile, were never formally attached to the car in the first place—just held in place by pressure (OK, there might have been some very basic hold-down clamps). So when the torsion beam was ripped out, the springs simply left the chat. If you watch closely in the above video, you can actually see one of the springs roll into frame on the pavement.
Here’s a top-down view of the Cruze’s torsion beam design, with a detailed explanation of each part and what went wrong, put together by the incredible David Tracy. The two connection points are actually held to the car via metal brackets, which stayed connected to the car, at least partially, going by the photo published by the Michigan State Police.
[Ed Note: I should add that some Cruze’s rear torsion beams featured a Watt’s Link, but I doubt this one did. -DT].
The lesson here? If you get grappled while trying to flee police in a car equipped with a torsion beam, don’t try to break free. You won’t just lose a tire, you’ll lose the entire rear end of your car.
Top photo: Michigan State Police and Livonia Police Department
Another example of expensive gadgets for police to feel like they’re in an action movie.
This whole thing failed to recover the car to its owner (it’s useless now), and put the general public in danger along the way, all on the taxpayer’s dime.
Gotta look for the positives, they did catch the guy, so at least he will no longer endanger the public.
Recovering the car intact is a tertiary goal of the police.
But it is a VERY DISTANT tertiary goal to the primary goal of ending a high speed chase quickly, and the secondary goal of catching the criminal.
I remember years back at That Old Site (TM) about crash bollard testing for high security facilities. One of the lines in the engineering report says:
“Survival of the driver is not a primary design concern.”
It’s the most awesome line in any engineering report I’ve ever read.
Watching the video I actually came to the exact opposite conclusion. The grappler stopped the car safely and with minimal damage, and at far less danger to other traffic and bystanders than a PIT maneuver.
The destruction of the rear axle came about much later after the suspect really went and tried to be an idiot, and only after the third big tug (complete with backing up to get a running start).
I’m just happy these heroes were able to return the victim’s car back to them.
Who steals a Chevy Cruz? A car thief with low self-esteem?
I think these thefts are not for the value of the vehicle but the value of the transportation it provides. Typically used to commit other crimes like robbery or drug deals or driveby shootings. That’s why the “easy to steal” Hyundai/Kia cars thing was so widespread.
I doubt the actual owner will be singing the praises of the grappler
If someone steals my car, I *want* it to be totalled. Usually.
Hey man, you just fucked up your Chevy.
It’s not mine.
Mixed feelings. This all turned out OK, more or less. But the Cruze driver also could have not stayed lined up in his lane and caused a massive pileup if he thought he could “unhook” by driving over there. Also coulda rammed one or both cop cars and caused a lot of damage. If you are in the mindset of fleeing the police, in this day and age, I’m not entirely sure putting you on a 50ft leash is a good idea at all, at least not unless you have someone you basically know is going to go do more serious harm immediately…
Worth noting that the police car that deployed the grappler can hit a button to unhook it from their vehicle at any time if they need to reverse out of there. (If, say, the person got out of the car with a gun and started firing.) But you do have a point.
All I can think of is… that poor person who’s car was stolen. Imagine getting the call, “we got it back… mostly”
Yeah, there is a certain mentality to “We caught the person, but we destroyed your property.”
The other option was it gets barrel rolled in a PIT maneuver, so the car was getting destroyed regardless.
The driver of an old Chevy Cruz almost certainly only has liability insurance. The type of person that STEALS an old Chevy Cruz almost certainly has zero assets. Law enforcement has zero liability for any actions in 2025. The owner of the Cruz is the victim here, and not just of the thief.
https://youtu.be/9T3cWzCgBCk
Well they did get it all back. Just in more pieces than when it was stolen…
But will the Hertz scanner catch the damage or just pass it on to the next renter?
COTD here.
Stupid is as stupid does.
This feels somewhat based around the police vehicle being substantially larger/heavier than the vehicle being pursued.
I’m sure some jurisdictions will use to get ever-larger and heavier vehicles for police use.
“On the third tug,
disasterslapstick struck.”“Stand by for justice!“
Curt Henderson
The in-depth explanation/deep dive is why I’m a member here. When I posted this in the discord, I couldn’t figure out how this would pull the whole axle off, but it’s clear with that provided vehicle.
The lesson learned should be not to run from the police in the first place or probably not to steal a car to get yourself into that situation. We’ve had a lot of deaths and injuries of innocent bystanders this summer in my area from police chases of stolen vehicles, even after the chase has been stopped for safety reasons. I hope this technology is available to more departments.
The other thing can happen too… I saw a guy in an F-350 (single, not dually) get snagged by one of these. When that happened, he first rammed the cop car going in reverse, then smashed the gas and ripped the front end of the cruiser in half.
I saw the video a couple years back, and now I wanna go find the link to share here.
It can definitely go wrong……for both parties
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMeycPDZE5Q
Keep looking, I want to see it too!
Note to self: Don’t get rough with Chevy Cruze if rear axle is hung up on something
This car thief may not have had Guns or Roses but he certainly had some Axel Woes
He ain’t going to Paradise City, I tell you.
This is why I advocate the use of Jewish Space Lasers to stop fleeing vehicles.
Very little debris gets left on the road.
And what does remain can be cleaned up with a broom and dustpan…
All well and good unless it’s Shabbos.
I wonder how powerful/heavily built a vehicle one would need to have in order to actually either break the nylon strap or drag the police cruiser against its brakes?
No specific reason for wondering of course….
Something with a big displacement V10 would be a good starting point. Not sure where one would get one of those though…
I was assuming four driven wheels as an absolute necessity.
Even if my car had towing capacity, it would just be a lot of tire smoke.
F-350 will rip the grappler and most of the front end off of the cruiser if done correctly.
I’m not sure how far you’re going to get with “most of the front end” dragging 50 feet behind you. But hey, a win’s a win.
yeah, even the SRT-10 Ram was only RWD
You only need more traction than the other vehicle.
Someone’s going to figure out a place to mount a cutting blade that would have a good chance of cutting the strap.
Mud flaps?
Like helicopter cable cutters?
The Abrams also uses torsion bar suspension, but you probably can get away with something a little lighter than that.
The trucks they load the Abrams on at 55 mph should work.
Eight wheel drive also
You don’t hear about the devices being used to stop big rigs. So …
The cops might just need to mount a scaled-up version on a big rig of their own.
A 2500 Cummins or higher weight rating with the right gearing has been known to drag cars around with the wheels locked.
Handy if a car is left blocking someone, or just needs to be moved.
A power company truck dragged my 4 ton truck up a steep gravel drive recently, quite easily. Very low traction hill.
Most wreckers can drag a car with all four wheels locked if necessary.
I do love the light atop the blue cruiser. Seems so retro.
I went back to watch after seeing your comment, expecting to see a fat light bar… but no, this was way better! That single round light definitely looks retro, love it!
Michigan State Police always had the single red light. So when they modernized with LED, they went with rotating LEDs! It’s really weird, but totally unique.
MSP has added modern alternating red/blue lights behind the windshield and rear glass, and sometimes on other surfaces of the car where they blend in. But the big “gumball machine” rotating red light and hood-mounted sign are iconic to their equally unchanging blue livery. It’s all so anachronistic that it’s cool now.
There are some unmarked blue cars with clear LEDs native blue, hidden all over the vehicle.
Maybe a factory package?
Clearly designed by a raver.
You can see those lights from airplanes at cruising altitude.
I think Michiganders call them Cherry Toppers, but I don’t know if that refers to the light, the car, the state police or the entire package.
I’ve always called them Gumball Machines 🙂
They are INCREDIBLY bright when you are close to them indoors.
And the sideways sign mounted on the hood.
That hit me right away, too! Reminded me of Police Squad and Naked Gun intros, as well as Blues Brothers.
They claim it’s more aerodynamic. They’re probably right.
On a Tahoe which is basically a Sears garden shed on a pickup chassis.
Is Sears still around? Haven’t seen one in some time.
Nitpicking: there’s no band of whitespace between the second-to-last photo and the text. Someone needs more coffee methinks. 😉
I like how the fleeing motorist backed up even further for his final attempt to break free, like a kid getting ready to jump a particularly big puddle or something. Cruzes are kind of mediocre cars, though the idea that you could buy one as a hatchback with a diesel was unusual/appealing (at least to me, but I’m odd).
Also, the Cruze is FWD… so, couldn’t the driver keep going for a bit even without the rear axle and wheels? I mean, provided that the sudden extraction didn’t tear out a fuel line or something?
Like in “A View to a Kill”? I think you probably could as long as the fuel shut off safety wasn’t triggered by the impact of losing the rear end. What might be fun there would be if he drove it for a while (without crashing somehow) and ground the rear down until it reached the fuel tank.
Yah, though I only recall that Bond film now that you mention it. I was just remembering the variety of video clips that I’ve seen over the years of cars still propelling themselves after losing their rear halves… more than a few. I assume most cars have their gas tanks in back, so these are only running til they’re out of fuel or catch fire, but this Cruze was intact except for the rear axle/suspension/wheels. I don’t know exactly where the gas tank of a Cruze is situated, but if it’s not dragging on the ground, it ought to be able to keep going until it is.
I would think it’s ahead of the axle, so it would take a while to grind down and it might be intact after the axle was removed. Were I a junk yard owner and this ended up in my junk yard, I’d definitely try seeing if I could drive it.
I had the same thought. I’ve currently got a Saturn Ion up on my lift which has similar configuration rear suspension. It’s quite possible the fuel line got ruptured as exitine parts flailed around, I think one story about this mentioned there was a fire afterwards.
Otherwise I’d expect this guy would have kept on driving while dragging @ss which would have made an even better video story.
Someone has been watching Matt’s Off-Road Recovery on YouTube. Just another yank and…well…maybe not this time.
Mental note, you can make two kinetic recovery attempts on a Chevy Cruze, but don’t try and get a big running start on #3.
yeah, if only he’d been a bit more conservative, I bet he could’ve gotten 2-3 more good pulls.
I do appreciate that each time he tried a little bit more run.
And as soon as the staties recognized what he was doing, they backed up and gave him all the room he needed to hang himself!
I think they were backing up to block that far most lane and stop people from driving past them. Probably not a good idea to have bystanders going past in case the driver tried to carjack them or something.
Doesn’t completely destroying someone’s stolen car defeat the purpose of trying to catch it in the first place?
It was going to be an insurance write-off anyway.
USAA wanted to write off my vehicle for very minor damage.
I think it’s becoming standard practice.
The main purpose is to catch the thief; recovering the car is secondary.
Like blowing up a bridge to catch a bank robber!
And / or stopping the thief from driving recklessly to prevent endangering others.
except….he’s likely only driving recklessly because they’re chasing him. It’s a tough call. Someone willing to steal a car is probably not the kind of person who waits 3 clicks of the turn signal before changing lanes. I’m also going to assume it wasn’t his first stolen car, nor would have been his last if he had gotten away. So maybe it’s worth wrecking one car to keep a bunch of others from getting snatched?
The fuzz didn’t destroy it, the driver did:
This is not typical with Grappler deployments and was solely the result of the driver’s reckless attempts to escape.
I think the real question is “doesn’t destroying the car you’re driving defeat the purpose of stealing it in the first place,” but nobody ever reckons on getting caught.
A lot of car thefts are just for shits-n-giggles. An old Cruze would make me think this is the case here, as well as him bringing some lady-friends along.
I can believe that right up until he tries–and tries hard–to escape. Honestly, pulling over and going to the clink seems like the easiest way out unless he’s got, like, Uzis in the trunk. Or one of those 30-year-old women was actually two fifteen-year-old girls in a trenchcoat.
Panic brain when the very real reality of catching a felony auto theft charge hits at the end of that strap.
I guess it depends on your goal?
Robbers are not people with long term planning, but they are aware they face little risk these days.
Depends. A car thief has a hard time stealing cars while in prison. Also if a car thief is driving recklessly they’re a danger to everyone else on the road.
Friend of mine got their car stolen from out in front of their house by a Meth Head, even though they were not being pursued by the police they still managed to hit something with the car, probably because they were high doing stupid shit. Car was recovered and the impound fees were like $500 even though my friend got there as soon as they were told by the police that their car was recovered.
Personally I’m more of the chop the hand off of their choosing strategy. Get caught twice and you’re stuck wiping your ass with stumps, and good luck stealing anything with your feet.
Police don’t care about stolen property, which is why theft is rampant.
Cities continue trying to con citizens that crime is down.
Textbook lesson in… Cruze control.
I’ll show myself out.
This is still the safest way to disable the vehicle, imo. Even with the massive damage, there’s little chance of anyone actually getting injured in any significant way.
Safer still would be to just let him go and not have dozens of vehicles hauling ass down a highway at God knows how fast.
So he can run into an innocent bystander?
We don’t know if the driver was speeding or driving erratically before the cops caught up with him.
Does he look like a responsible driver?
I mean, there’s a greater chance of hitting a bystander with a dozen speeding cars versus just one.
At least by me, this is very much not the case. Turns out assclowns become even bigger assclowns if they don’t have to worry about getting caught.
I thought the same until I saw that linked video of the cop car getting ping-ponged into the concrete barriers on both sides of the highway. He seemed fine, but with a different geometry he could have ended up flipped on his roof or have both tethered vehicles whip around and slam into each other. It’s all speculation but I’m curious what the safety statistics are on these.
I bet virtually no testing.
Or they could call onstar and GM remotely disable the car.