The officer now faces up to three months' imprisonment instead of 10 years.
His lawyer argued he was just doing his job.
A long-time Auckland motorbike cop who hit an estimated 190km/h during a pursuit of another motorcyclist that ended in tragedy has been acquitted of dangerous driving causing death but found guilty of a lesser charge.
The 58-year-old constable, who continues to have name suppression, could have faced up to 10 years imprisonment had he been found guilty of the more serious charge.
He instead now faces a maximum sentence of three months imprisonment and a $4500 fine for driving in a dangerous manner – a charge that makes no mention of death.
Judge Mary Beth Sharp set a sentencing date for April.
Jurors in Auckland District Court returned their verdict on Friday afternoon, five days after the trial started. The officer was accused of poor decision-making on the morning of July 13, 2023 that contributed to the fatal crash of fleeing rider Levi Proctor on State Highway 18‘s Tauhinu Rd off-ramp.
By all accounts, the fleeing motorcyclist had made poor decisions as well. It is not known why he sped away from the officer, but Crown prosecutor Robin McCoubrey acknowledged that he didn’t have a motorbike licence and had methamphetamine and cannabis in his system.
“It would be strange if you didn’t have an adverse reaction to that factual scenario,” he said during a closing address on Thursday.
Police investigate the scene of the fatal motorcycle crash at the Tauhinu Road off-ramp at Greenhithe on State Highway 18 in 2023. Photo / Hayden Woodward
But a “cold and clinical” analysis of the facts – one that excludes prejudice or sympathy for either man – shows that the officer broke the law in deciding to pursue him closely for almost 11km at “breakneck speeds”, McCoubrey argued.
Jurors viewed footage from multiple traffic cameras that showed both motorbikes zipping past other motorists that morning. Proctor rode a red Ducati while the defendant followed on his own motorbike with lights and siren activated.
Circles were edited into the videos to follow both motorbikes up until the final moment, when Proctor – travelling at an estimated 135km/h – hit a truck while failing to negotiate a turn at the off-ramp.
It is not known why Proctor decided to flee, but there was “absolutely no reason at all” for the officer to have chased him as he did, the prosecutor said.
“This is actually pretty simple: why did Levi Proctor ride as he did? Because he was being pursued by a motorcycle cop,” McCoubrey said, explaining that Proctor – despite the drugs in his system – appears to have been handling his motorbike “completely normally” before his encounter with the officer.
“[The officer] must have known the risks,” McCoubrey said of the pursuit.
“I can’t think of [a] worse way to get that person safely off the road. It’s about as unsafe as you can get.”
Police are allowed to break the speed limit in the course of their job, especially if they believe the public is in danger.
“But they don’t have carte blanche to do as they want to,” McCoubrey added, describing the threat posed by the Ducati as “nil”.
To have been found guilty of dangerous driving causing death, jurors would have had to find that the officer was at least partly the cause of the crash. They weren’t required to determine that he was the only cause.
McCoubrey emphasised that the defendant was a “hugely experienced motorcycle officer” who had spent countless hours “keeping Aucklanders safe”.
He suggested the Crown’s entire premise was based on an assumption that Proctor was thinking about the officer at all as he “thundered down that road”.
“How can any of us be sure what was in his head at that time?” Simmonds asked. “None of us will ever know. There’s far too much at stake here for guesswork, for speculation, for assumptions.”
He also chided prosecutors for taking it as a given that his client’s riding that morning fell below the standard of a competent driver. He argued that his client shouldn’t be found guilty of either charge.
“This is not two boy racers out for a hoon on the motorway.”
Simmonds noted that the traffic along the motorway that morning was relatively light. There was no abrupt movement from any other road users seen in the footage and no near misses.
“It’s a clinic in quick, safe driving from a very experienced police officer,” he said.
“Where do we draw the line? There’s danger every time a police officer rolls out the door from a police station.
“It’s part and parcel of being an officer.”
Creating fear among officers that if they do their job they might end up on trial is a recipe for an inefficient, overly risk-averse police force, he suggested.
Simmonds emphasised that even if the jury ultimately decided that the officer’s riding was dangerous, there was no evidence that his riding contributed to Proctor’s death.
There was no way of getting in Proctor’s head to know why he took the corner so fast, he said.
“He might have been so affected by methamphetamine and/or cannabis that he thought he was going to negotiate that corner at that speed,” Simmonds said.
“That’s what methamphetamine and cannabis often does to people’s perception.
“He may have been thinking he was Superman at that stage – we just don’t know. There’s far too many factors here in the mix to say it’s all the police officer’s fault.”
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
Reporter Herikō is at Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngaa Papaonekura, where tamariki from kura all over the motu are running their hearts out in cross country races.
