Do you throw a moving vehicle into park ?

[Derek69SS]

Cops aren't mechanics or scientists... seems like you hear a lot of "a cop once told me" things about driving safety that are way off-the-wall crazy and obviously false. (not saying cops can't be smart about the subject, just that police-training does not necessarily go into Newton's laws, thermal-dynamics, or mechanics)

"Park" would do nothing in that situation... The emergency-brake might have helped, but if he was using that prior to what you see in the video, he may have overheated the rear brakes making that useless as well. Or it may have not been operational to begin with, which is not uncommon in the flat-land parts of the rust-belt.