By Jackelyn Barnard
First Coast News

JACKSONVILLE, FL -- JSO says Hollywood glamorizes police pursuits. Those chases are now more dangerous and JSO is making some changes.

For years, the Sheriff's office has had a policy on police pursuits. Officers had to consider traffic volume, weather, and risks to the public before getting involved in a chase.

Those rules are still in place, but there are new revisions, basically asking officers to question themselves if the pursuit is the best thing to do.

The changes outline what situations police can consider serious enough to pursue a criminal or a car in question.

They are all serious offenses like murder, kidnapping or sex crimes.

"It's not a green light to pursue. It's saying to an officer it may be OK to pursue," says Chief Wayne Clark of JSO.

Other changes, if the officer decides to get involved in a pursuit, JSO's helicopter will go up to follow the chase and record it on videotape.

That tape will then be reviewed within 72 hours of the chase to make sure all the guidelines were followed.

"The biggest thing is we're putting more scrutiny on our officers and supervisors, to make sure if we engage in pursuit the crime is worth us putting citizens, officers and the bad guy at risk," says Chief Clark.

Clark says JSO will have to get creative in dealing with these kinds of situations.

One idea is to have the helicopter follow the car, and have police on the ground meet up with the car in question down the road.

Another idea is to get police close enough to get a license plate number and then track that person down later.