North Tonawanda train crash is reminder of the dangers that can come with traffic stops (2024)

When police went out on a saturation patrol in North Tonawanda on May 17, they were not expecting to be on the scene of a fatal train crash that evening.

But that is exactly what happened when a man driving a pickup got stuck on the tracks as the railroad gates closed in. The incident, which killed David McMinn, Olive Geldart and 6-year-old Ra’Mari Geldart, was a stark reminder of the many dangers for motorists and police that can come with performing traffic stops.

North Tonawanda Police Capt. Rob Frank said that the department does not have training for safely carrying out saturation patrols specifically, but does train for safely carrying out all the different situations that are involved in the operation.

A saturation patrol is a method employed by many police departments where a large number of officers patrol a particular area at the same time – sometimes in tandem with other departments, as was the case on May 17 – with the goal of targeting a specific crime or issue.

“Regardless of what we’re on, there’s training that goes in effect every year to make sure people, that make sure officers put themselves in the best situation to not cause themselves or anybody else injury or harm or anything like that,” Frank said.

His department consistently conducts saturation patrols targeting impaired driving crimes, looking for people with warrants, using canine units to search for narcotics and assisting U.S. Customs and Border Patrol looking for people who have crossed into the country illegally from Canada on the Niagara River, he said.

On the night the three people in the pickup were killed, Frank said his officers were looking for people with warrants with the cooperation of officers from the Lewiston and Lockport police departments and the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office.

He could not offer many details about the situation before the crash, as it is still under investigation, but Frank did confirm that the Lewiston Police Department canine unit that made the stop on the east side of the railroad tracks was in the road. However, McMinn, the driver of the pickup, had room to get beyond the railroad tracks, Frank said.

McMinn had turned off of River Road onto Felton Street where the officer had pulled over a motorist. That vehicle was towed as a result of the stop.

The North Tonawanda Police Department also regularly performs saturation patrols targeting railroad safety, sending officers out on all-terrain vehicles to issue citations and warnings to people walking or driving on the tracks. Frank said that he is still compiling data, but the department has issued hundreds of citations and warnings in the last six months.

“There’s a lot of people that don’t know about the railroad, so they either park on the railroad tracks, or they go through red lights to go on to the railroad tracks,” Frank said.

John Bandler, a former New York State trooper and adjunct professor at John Jay College, said that with saturation patrols and other vehicle stops that are not in a specific, planned location, the decision by the officer to pull over a driver may potentially lead to an unsafe situation.

“Sometimes people don’t see that you’re trying to pull them over until too late and then they pull over rapidly in a bad spot,” he said.

He said unsafe situations can develop quickly, and officers need to use their training to try to clear up those situations as fast as they can. However, motorists also need to use common sense and obey traffic laws, he said.

“Sometimes, there’s obstructions or traffic accidents or car stops, or a car stops and it’s in the road and you can’t move it right away,” Bandler said. “Then it’s up to the other motorists to do something reasonable.”

Bandler said that the public sometimes applies but-for logic – the idea that something that was done by an officer caused a string of events that resulted in a bad result – to policing decisions. He argued that police actions should be viewed through a reasonableness lens – asking whether the officers were acting reasonably with the situation they are presented and the information they have at the time.

“There’s a tendency when something bad happens with policing for some people to assume the police must have done something wrong,” Bandler said. “If they had done something different then this wouldn’t happen.”

Anita Butera, director of Canisius University’s Criminal Justice program, said police do need to expect unsafe conditions during operations like saturation patrols and checkpoints and do their best to direct people who are confused or impatient with the traffic.

“The main issue is to make sure that there is no danger for the people,” she said. “Because when you have a saturation patrol or even a checkpoint patrol, you should expect the backup in traffic.”

North Tonawanda police said they are providing counseling opportunities to first responders as they continue to deal with the mental stress of being on the scene of the crash.

Bandler said he feels for the officers on the stop, as police and other first responders are often asked to deal with traumatic incidents. That’s especially true in situations like this one, where the officers were already on the scene.

“Cops are people, too, and, you know, they may come up with different ways to deal with it or cope with it, but it’s hard,” he said.