So I laughed at a metro story in this morning’s New York
Times, where an arrestee describes his fellow suspect’s escape:
“He fled,” Mr. Zacharakis said. “He didn’t look at me. He didn’t worry about me.”
Though I’ve never written or edited the kind of stories that deal with fleeing, I’ve always had a soft spot for “fled
on foot,” which allows for the kind of ambiguity
that “ran away” does not. It’s entirely possible, after all, that the police (and you)
know only that your suspect has eluded capture,
apparently without the help of a vehicle.
In the comments to McIntyre’s blog post on cop jargon, two editors make this very point. “Lacking any certain
knowledge about a robber's getaway gait, I am loath to change ‘fled on foot’ to
‘ran away’” writes one.
Exactly. He or she might have crawled under a porch, climbed a
drainpipe, pulled off a wig and melted into a crowd and sauntered around a corner. Fine, say “ran
away” if witnesses saw him sprinting down the street; but what if the picture
isn’t so clear?
I don’t see why we should flee from “fled.” The New
York suspect may have learned the usage from the police, but its source doesn’t make it a
bad word. It’s not fancy or long or hard to spell or pronounce, and it gets the
concept across. Maybe I'm going soft, but that's good enough for me.