2021 Colorado Code
Title 42 - Vehicles and Traffic
Article 4 - Regulation of Vehicles and Traffic
Part 14 - Other Offenses
§ 42-4-1413. Eluding or Attempting to Elude a Police Officer

Any operator of a motor vehicle who the officer has reasonable grounds to believe has violated a state law or municipal ordinance, who has received a visual or audible signal such as a red light or a siren from a police officer driving a marked vehicle showing the same to be an official police, sheriff, or Colorado state patrol car directing the operator to bring the operator's vehicle to a stop, and who willfully increases his or her speed or extinguishes his or her lights in an attempt to elude such police officer, or willfully attempts in any other manner to elude the police officer, or does elude such police officer commits a class 2 misdemeanor traffic offense.

History. Source: L. 94: Entire title amended with relocations, p. 2398, § 1, effective January 1, 1995.

This section is similar to former § 42-4-1512 as it existed prior to 1994.

For provision that the operation of vehicles and the movement of pedestrians pursuant to this section apply upon streets and highways and elsewhere throughout the state, see § 42-4-103 (2)(b) .

Annotator's note. Since § 42-4-1413 is similar to § 42-4-1512 as it existed prior to the 1994 amending of title 42 as enacted by SB 94-1, relevant cases construing that provision have been included in the annotations to this section.

A defendant may be charged with multiple offenses of eluding a police officer arising from a single criminal episode when he or she has performed discrete acts of eluding one or more police officers, each constituting a new volitional departure in defendant's course of conduct. People v. McMinn, 2013 COA 94 , 412 P.3d 551.

Under double jeopardy principles, defendant's four convictions for vehicular eluding do not merge with one another, and defendant's four convictions for eluding a police officer do not merge with one another because each officer was eluded during separate times at separate locations. People v. McMinn, 2013 COA 94 , 412 P.3d 551.

Fleeing on foot is included in the phrase “any other manner” of eluding, and the maxim ejusdem generis does not limit eluding to only those situations in which the operator uses the motor vehicle to elude the police officer, particularly given that § 18-9-116.5 criminalizes vehicular eluding while recklessly operating a motor vehicle. People v. Espinoza, 195 P.3d 1122 (Colo. App. 2008).

Section does not require immediate compliance. The evidence was insufficient to sustain a conviction for violating this section when defendant did not accelerate and drove only two blocks before turning into a school parking lot, driving over a six-inch curb, stopping, and following the officer's directions to get out of the vehicle. People v. Procasky, 2019 COA 181 , — P.3d —.

Crime of eluding a police officer is not a lesser included offense of vehicular eluding, as defined in § 18-9-116.5 . People v. Fury, 872 P.2d 1280 (Colo. App. 1993); People v. Pena, 962 P.2d 285 (Colo. App. 1997); People v. Esparza-Treto, 282 P.3d 471 (Colo. App. 2011).

Applied in Brutcher v. District Court, 195 Colo. 579 , 580 P.2d 396 ; People v. Mascarenas, 632 P.2d 1028 (Colo. 1981).