Fleeing Suspects - TV Tropes

"Why do they always run?"

• The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You: In Chapter 71, Naddy gets interrogated by two police officers called in response to a ruckus caused during an attempt to dissuade two of Chiyo's classmates from smoking in the park. Chiyo, acting on Naddy's advice from earlier, drags her away from the officers, who decide not to pursue them due to the call mentioning a DJ in the bushes (actually Rentarou, who was planning his own dissuasion method before the girls resolved the issue on their own).

• Elementary My Dear Natsuki: In the second segment, "Come Natsuki, The Game Is Afoot", Natsuki and Shizuru determine that someone has been "Playing Ghost" to drive Colonel Warburton insane. The pair confront the "ghost" in the garden, who then attempts to flee through a secret passage before Natsuki gives him a solid blow to the jaw. Shizuru expresses surprise that the "ghost" ran, as she knew Gregory Dashiel wanted to be caught, as the sheer amount of effort he'd gone to would lend credence to his otherwise difficult-to-believe tale of Warburton murdering Dashiel's wife, Warburton's sister, to conceal their Brother–Sister Incest. She reasons that it was the heat of the moment that made him flee, but once caught Dashiel offers no resistance.
• A Game of Cat and Cat: A group of supernatural civilians are investigating something at the same time as the government, and flee from the government investigators when discovered because their alibis wouldn't hold up.

• Justified in The LEGO Movie when the police, led by Bad Cop, invade Cloud Cuckoo Land to capture "The Special" and as many fugitive Master Builders as they can. Their ruthless tactics leave Cloud Cuckoo Land a flaming wreck that plummets into the sea, dooming hundreds of native citizens.

• Clockwise: Brian's haste to get away from the police is one reason of many his journey becomes incredibly farcical. When he vandalises a public telephone in a fit of temper, a neighbour calls the police. The neighbour's daughter Pat happens to be Brian's ex-girlfriend, and she chats with him to play for time. When Brian sees a police car approaching, he decides to get away quickly. Laura will not let him drive because he had crashed the car earlier, and Brian does not want the police to catch Laura driving without a licence, so he asks Pat to drive. They speed off, just as the police officer goes to talk to them. Pat's mother then believes Brian has kidnapped Pat and the police car chases them.
• The Devil's Own has one scene where Harrison Ford's character, a beat cop, and his partner do a foot chase on a young Black teen. When they catch the kid, it turns out he had been too embarrassed to bring some condoms up to the register and run off with them. They chew him out just a little and let him go, with the warning not to run next time in case he gets some Trigger-Happy idiot chasing him.
• The Grand Budapest Hotel: After Monsieur Gustave H. is confronted at his hotel lobby by Inspector Henckels and his police, just after he's been visiting the wake of his late lover Madame D., Gustave is quick to connect the pieces: "She's been murdered… And now, you think I did it…", at which point he then panics and runs for it. Henckels looks at his men, as if silently thinking "You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!" before they start pursuing him to bring him in.
• Hot Fuzz has several moments where Sgt. Angel chases a suspect. At one point, he exasperatedly tells his colleagues who believe that he's just paranoid that "innocent people don't run."
• Early in Lethal Weapon 4, a Triad involved in a Human Trafficking operation managed to escape the protagonists. Later in the film, they spot that same guy hanging out next to a short, skinny guy in front of a restaurant owned by the biggest crime boss in Chinatown. The cops all draw their guns and go to detain the Triad. Both the Triad and the skinny guy run away, but at least the good guys manage to catch the skinny guy… and learn to their chagrin that he was just a waiter at the restaurant who is completely uninvolved in anything illegal; the waiter panicked and ran when he saw a bunch of guys with guns out coming towards him.
• In Men in Black, Officer James Edward (the future Agent J) is introduced pursuing a fleeing suspect. As it turns out, the suspect is actually a henchman of the Bug, and he jumps off a building to his death to avoid being killed by the Bug for failing to deliver the Galaxy to him.
• Street Kings: Invoked. Ludlow and Diskant walk up to a house party somewhere in the ghetto specifically so that one of the attendees will get skittish and try to run away from them. They then pursue that guy, trap him in barbed wire, and interrogate him.

• A fishing license inspector comes across two men fishing. One of them takes off running, and the inspector pursues. After a chase, the inspector catches the runner and demands his license. The man produces a valid license in his name, and the inspector incredulously asks why he ran if he had a license. "I do, yes," says the man, "but my friend didn't."

• Alex Cross novels Cross Fire and Kill Alex Cross both feature a scene where a suspect immediately runs when they think they're found out. Both times, Alex mentally notes how annoying this is.
• The Contender: Discussed. When the Black 17-year-old Alfred has just started boxing training, he's told to run in the mornings to improve his wind. He has no running gear, so he just goes to the park and starts running, and some cops pull him over — he's running, so he must have done something bad to run away from, right? But then he tells them about the gym he's training at, and they've heard of it, so they let him go. Later in the book, he starts to recognize other runners and they him, so they wave at each other as they pass, as do the cops who initially stopped him.
• Discworld:
  • In Unseen Academicals, everyone on the street scampers when the Watch shows up, even though most of them weren't involved in the trouble.

    "It was all very well for the Watch to say 'the innocent have nothing to fear', but what was that all about? Who cared about the innocent and their problems when the Watch were on their way?"

  • Snuff:
    • Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Watch, comments to an inexperienced but eager local constable that he prefers it when they run:

      Vimes: You were in a difficult position, lad, and I'll tell you something: so am I. It's called being a copper. That's why I like it when they run. That makes it all so simple. They run and I chase.

    • Later, he has Feeney, the constable in question, bang on the front door of a suspect's house, then goes around back and sticks his foot out so that when the schmuck in question inevitably runs, he doesn't get further than about a foot.
  • Men at Arms notes that honest people have a lot to fear from the police and that anyone not running when they see Detritus barrelling down the road towards them is guilty of breaking Ankh-Morpork's "Being Bloody Stupid Act".
• To Kill a Mockingbird: In the trial scene, Atticus asks Tom Robinson why he ran from the scene of the crime if he was innocent. He tells Atticus that, if he were a person of color, "you'd have run, too."

• Bones: Booth chases a suspect and ends up chasing him into a kitchen, where he knocks the guy out after a brief fight using a nearby frying pan.
• Brooklyn Nine-Nine:
  • Parodied and justified in "The Fugitive, Part 2". Jake, Holt, and Doug Judy are at an auction looking for Doug Judy's evil foster brother when Judy thinks he spots his brother's girlfriend, Fran. Jake walks quickly after Fran, who keeps speeding up until she's sort of running away from him. When he and Holt corner her, they realize it isn't Fran.

    Jake: Then why was she running?
    Not Fran: Because a strange guy started following me to the bathroom!
    Jake: Oh, right. Because men are horrible and the world is a nightmare, yeah.

  • In "Kicks", Jake accidentally blows his and Charles's cover after asking about "Jenny McFadden", alias for the shoe thief. The contact gets caught but claims that he only ran because he had two priors.
  • Parodied when Jake was running after a suspect who at one point saw a woman getting into her car, the suspect grabbed the woman, threw her onto the sidewalk stole the car… and drove right into New York City gridlock. The chase ended with Jake casually strolling up to the car and tapping on the window.
• Castle: As a show focusing on the relationship between a mystery novelist and an NYPD detective, they frequently have suspects run from them. Some notable instances:
  • "Hell Hath No Fury", a campaign manager, working with a jilted wife, helps to arrange the murder of the wife's philandering politician husband. When the campaign manager is confronted by Ryan and Esposito, he tries to run, only for Ryan to clothesline him and tell him, "Stop running, bro. Campaign's over."
  • In "Wrapped Up in Death", the killer, exposed for his crime, runs from Beckett and Castle. Castle is incredulous, asking, "Is he actually running away?" Beckett affirms it, "It's primal instinct. Fight or flight." She also notes they don't need to run after the guy. All the exits, it turns out, are covered, and he actually slips on a freshly mopped floor and falls down a flight of stairs, where a uniformed officer catches him.
  • In "Under the Gun", when Ryan and Esposito go to make an inquiry about a robbery from the geriatric Clifford Stucky. They get as far as calling out to him, when he lets go of his walker and takes off running, revealing that he was in better physical shape than he'd let on. He actually manages to evade Ryan and Esposito, which they note that they'll never hear the end of. Cut to Castle laying out adult diapers, prune juice, dentures, and a few other items suggesting they were over the hill while asking Beckett if they were back yet.
• Community:
  • In "The Science of Illusion", Jeff runs from Annie and Shirley, who have been deputized as campus security during April Fools' Day. Annie gives chase on foot, leading to her pepper spraying herself.
  • Lampshaded in "Basic Lupine Urology", an episode parodying cop shows. Troy and Abed twice attempt in unison to ask "Why…", before Troy gives Abed the go-ahead to say it, before they actually give chase.

    Abed: Why do they always run?

  • Happens twice in "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics". First, Star-Burns runs from Jeff and Annie when they discover him at the Greendale College stables, and later, the botany professor does the same. Each time, it's because the suspect had a secret to protect.
• CSI: NY:
  • One notable instance has Mac chasing a fleeing suspect and getting knocked down a stairway to set up the episode's "Rear Window" Witness plot.
  • Lindsay resorts to some low-speed Car Fu when a suspect tries to speed off in his car in a parking garage. No one is hurt and the guy is arrested.
• FBI: Suspect chases are so common, they are pretty much Once an Episode, to the point that it's more unusual for a suspect not to try to run when they see the agents or announce they are the FBI. Whilst this is usually at least somewhat justified, as most of the individuals have done something legitimately illegal (even if it's not related to the case they're actually investigating), there are some occasions where they simply turn out to be completely innocent and simply panicked, usually earning the agents' frustration at them for wasting their time when the matter could have been easily resolved.
• FBI: Most Wanted: Whilst more restrained than its parental series, the show also features its fair share of suspects fleeing — though it's more justified as their targets are wanted fugitives on the run, thus even any associates of them wouldn't want to actually get caught.
• The Flash: Subverted. Barry Allen is framed for a murder he didn't commit. He knows he's innocent because he was literally not present for the murder. However, he tells himself not to run and plants his feet when the police announce themselves. What makes this subversion especially significant is that Barry is the titular character, and if he chose to run, no one could catch him except another speedster.
• Gotham: In the first episode, "Pilot", detectives Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock go to interview Mario Pepper, a suspect in the Wayne murder case. Pepper flees — and when the detectives pursue him, Pepper attacks them, forcing Bullock to fatally shoot him to save Gordon's life. Later, in Pepper's apartment, they find evidence that he was the killer. But after that, they learn from a mob informant that Pepper was framed, and the evidence was planted, so Pepper only ran and fought because he was guilty of completely unrelated crimes.
• Graceland:
  • Briggs is doing an undercover sting but the target is too paranoid to do a drug deal with someone he does not know. As a last resort, Briggs raises his shirt and reveals that he is wearing a wire. The drug dealer panics and makes a run for it. Briggs chases the guy through a building where he observes all sorts of illegal items like drugs and guns, which gives the cops probable cause to search the building and arrest everyone involved. If the dealer stayed put and simply laughed in Briggs' face, the cops would have had to walk away since they did not have enough probable cause for a search warrant.
  • Subverted in another instance when a gangbanger makes a run for it as soon as he sees Briggs coming toward him. When the guy is caught, he is relieved when he realizes that Briggs is a cop; he ran because he thought that Briggs was a rival drug dealer coming to kill him.
• In the High Potential episode "Dirty Rotten Scoundrel", Morgan arranges an encounter between Detective Karadec and Prado, a hotel bartender whom she suspects is the most likely suspect in a murder case. When Prado realizes that he's a suspect, he books it and flees into the hotel kitchen. After Prado is caught, Karadec bawls out Morgan, pointing out that a fleeing suspect is actually a serious situation and every effort should be made to get the suspect to surrender beforehand.
• Jessica Jones has an awkward escape run in an episode where private detective Jessica visits a suspect, a professor, during one of his lectures. He runs from the classroom as soon as he notices her amongst the students.
• Law & Order:
  • Exploited when Detective Greevey knocks on a suspect's apartment door. As expected, the suspect ducks out the window and clambers down the fire escape. At the bottom, he quite literally runs into Detective Logan waiting for him in the building's back alley.
  • When the series returned after a twelve-year hiatus, suspect chases became so common, they are pretty much Once an Episode, to the point that to make them happen they had to have the detectives grab the Idiot Ball and announce themselves to the suspects they approach when they're still far away enough to make a run for it.
• The Mandalorian: In "Chapter 10: The Passenger", Mando's ship is identified as having taken part in a prison break from the previous season, so he attempts to flee as he has a passenger to deliver. The X-Wing pilots let out the equivalent of beleaguered sighs and give chase. Mando does eventually lose them for a while, but they are able to track him down just in time to save his life from ice spiders. Ultimately, they let him off, as while yes, he was involved in a prison break, he helped capture three other prisoners and attempted to save a shuttle operator's life, balancing the books as far as they were concerned.
• Medium: In "An Everlasting Love", the suspect in a series of serial killings runs from the police after he's spotted with the same kind of tape that was used to tie up the victims. He's hit by a car and killed, after which he appears in a dream to Alison to tell her that he's been wrongly accused and that his "prior convictions" were pot-smoking and harassing a girl he liked more than she liked him. He's lying; it turns out he and his girlfriend were the killers.
• NCIS has plenty of examples, though one of the more notable ones has a suspect try to run from Ziva and DiNozzo, going up several sets of stairs… and collapsing, suffering a heart attack from overexerting himself and from age.
• One episode of NCIS: Los Angeles has Callen go to talk to one of his informants, who takes off when he sees them despite Callen telling him "Don't run!" Cue Sam stepping out from behind a tree and clotheslining the guy.

  Callen: I specifically said, "Don't run."

• A variation occurs in Night Court, where the pursuing "officer" is a bailiff. After an attempt is made on Harry's life, Bull chases the suspect who blends into the crowd in the lobby. He tries to invoke this trope since he thinks the suspect will run if he comes rushing into the lobby. Instead, he rushes into the lobby and everybody runs.

  Bull: I figured that whoever threw the rock through the window would have to come down the fire escape and onto the street.
  Judge Harry T. Stone: Right.
  Bull: Then I figured the sight of someone like me barreling out of the courthouse would cause him to panic and flee, and then I'd nab him.
  Lana: So what happened?
  Bull: Everyone panicked and fled!

• Those Two Guys, Colby and David, on NUMB3RS are quite tired of people doing this and, as the show wears on, lampshade it heavily. For example, in the Season 4 episode "Graphic", they go to question a suspect, who had just gotten out of the shower, who then proceeds to go out of the window with a towel, and then runs into two women who proceed to kick him until the agents intervene.
• Southland: An incredibly common occurrence, to the point that it happens practically Once per Episode. Some examples include:
  • After performing a traffic stop and cuffing a suspect, Sherman goes to search the suspect's car with Cooper, giving the suspect an opportunity to flee. Sherman gives chase on foot while Cooper drives their patrol vehicle after the suspect, eventually causing him to trip and be rearrested.
  • In the Season 3 finale, Sherman and Cooper chase a kidnapping and rape suspect on foot. Cooper's back injury causes him to quickly fall behind Sherman, who ends up in a brutal fight with the suspect on the roof of a building, which ends with the suspect fleeing again, this time falling to his death while trying to leap between buildings.
• The Wire:
  • In the episode "Time After Time", Sergeant Carver mentions this to a delinquent hiding from the cops:

    "I'm only going to say this one time. If you march out here right now and put the bracelets on, we will not kick the living shit out of you! But if you make us go into those weeds to catch you, or make us come back here another night, catch you on the corner, we will beat you longer and harder than you beat your own dick!"

  • In Season 3, freshly promoted Lieutenant Carver is preparing to bust a drug dealing operation at a corner and prepares his men by telling them that every group has a designated runner whose job is to get the police to chase him while actually not holding anything, and they plan to just let him go while arresting everyone else. However, after the runner notices no one is coming after him, he doubles back and grabs the nearby stash of drug vials, leading the police to have to chase after him after all, eventually leading to an extensive manhunt. When Major Colvin is later briefed about the incident, he notes that the amount of drugs seized by the massive operation hardly justified the expense, and took up manpower to stop the drug trade elsewhere in the district.
  • In Season 4, after the Lafayette boys get into an altercation with another group of boys and have to scatter, Officer Walker nabs Randy because he was running, and and pockets the cash Randy had on him.
• World's Dumbest...: Given the series started off showing clips of dumb criminals, it's not surprising that some of their most prominent ones are of criminals fleeing from police. When the criminals inevitably get caught for their stupidity, expect the cast having a field day making fun of them.
• The X-Files: The episode "Teliko" revolves around the disappearance of four Black men, one of whom was eventually found dead and his skin turned pale. Mulder and Scully's investigation leads them to Samuel Aboah, an immigrant from Burkina Faso, who flees from them when they try to ask him some questions. While he is held in custody at a hospital, Aboah's immigration counsellor arrives to vouch for his innocence and tells Mulder that he would understand why Aboah ran if he had ever been beaten, harassed, or terrorized simply because of his race. However, Aboah turns out to be the culprit.

• "This Is What Makes Us Girls" by Lana Del Rey:

  Yo, we used to go break into the hotel
  Glimmerin', we'd swim
  Runnin' from the cops in our black bikini tops
  Screamin', "Get us while we're hot, get us while we're hot"

• "Norf Norf" by Vince Staples:

  I never ran from nothin' but the police

• Discussed in Ghost Trick at the start of Chapter 5, after Lynne — who's been detained on suspicion of Sissel's murder — manages to escape from custody. In her defence, a) she's on a Race Against the Clock to save her mentor from the electric chair, and b) she technically is guilty of Sissel's murder, even if she doesn't know it at this point.

  Blue Cop: Angel, friend or family — they all run when they have the chance!

• Miroslav Korda from Heavy Rain starts running as soon as Blake and Jayden approach him. More than justified if he's ever dealt with Blake before, though.

• Used in one strip of Two Guys and Guy; Wayne apparently just feels guilty around authority figures:

  Wayne: I really have no idea what this is about, I just feel guilty around authority. I'm gonna run now, please don't shoot.

• In a Vine short, two guys are casually walking through a neighborhood, but when they hear sirens they take off. They run through people's yards, hop over fences, and duck behind alleys; when one asks the other why they ran, the other responds, "Duh! We Black!"

• Spectacular chases happen Once an Episode in Fillmore!. This is made more ridiculous when you remember the series takes place in a school, and therefore the suspects will almost certainly be back the next day. Of course, being a parody of cop shows, this doesn't go unnoticed.
• Garfield and Friends: In the episode "Wanted: Wade", Orson, Roy, and Wade run away upon hearing a voice tell them to "come out with their hands up" for pulling the tag off a pillow. Even when it's revealed that it was an elaborate prank by Booker and Sheldon, the trio is still seen running away in the final shot.
• Played with in the Miraculous Ladybug episode "Confrontation", except with class reps instead of cops. When Sabrina is fingered in a plot to replace her classmate's school forms so that they all end up in different high schools, all she can do is insist that she has proof that she was coerced and then run like hell, forcing class reps Lila and Chloe to chase after her. This turns out to be a tactical decision: Lila and Chloe were the ones behind the scheme but if Sabrina had tried to explain the situation to her classmates, Lila would simply calmly deny it and everyone else would believe her. On the other hand, having to chase after Sabrina seriously pisses Lila off and by the time she and Chloe corner Sabrina in a mobile bathroom, she drops all pretense of being nice as she threatens to get Sabrina arrested on trumped-up charges… unaware that the mobile bathroom has been rigged with a microphone and a one-way mirror, and thus all of her classmates are watching her outside and can hear everything she said.

• If you ever watch shows that play police dash cam videos, people who have done absolutely nothing more than commit a traffic violation will sometimes engage police in a pursuit just to avoid a ticket.