Editorial: Police pursuits under intense scrutiny

A pursued vehicle finally comes to a halt on a curb in Pt Chevalier after the tyres were spiked at a police cordon. Photo / Hayden Woodward, File 20 September 2021

Opinion

EDITORIAL

The stakes involved when police give chase to a suspected offender escalate sharply in a moment.

The lives of the officers, suspects, their passengers, and members of the general public are immediately at high risk.

As first revealed by Herald political journalist Adam Pearse this week, police commanders have introduced a fresh “Fleeing Driver Framework”. The new framework encourages decisions on whether to pursue to be informed by the type of crime committed and the risk posed to the public, either through future offending or in a police pursuit.

It’s likely this will mean police will chase more fleeing drivers.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the new rules balanced safety and holding offenders to account. They also factored in the further harm an offender could cause if they were not apprehended, he said. “Whether we’re pursuing or not, there is a risk to the public,” he said.

Tony Jarvis’ daughter Karleane Magon was a passenger in a car that fled from police and was killed in 2010, at 20 years old. Javis told RNZ he was astonished police would loosen restrictions on police pursuits, especially after the death of another fleeing driver in Dunedin just two days ago.

“The police know all these decades of police pursuits; the amount of innocent people that have died, and yet, in the face of a tragedy in the weekend, they’re upping their police pursuits and hoping for a different outcome? That’s insanity.”

Our sympathies to this family but, for most reasonable-thinking people in times of reasonable circumstances, it would seem insane to accelerate away from police officers. Insane might be an apt description, literally failing to appreciate the significance of a situation.

Prime Minister Chris Hipkins says he knows from his time as Police Minister that senior officers were trying to get “the balance right” between the safety of everyone while not permitting offenders impunity from arrest.

Hipkins said he didn’t want police “creating unnecessary harm to public safety but I also don’t want to see fleeing drivers get away with it”. And he’s right.

So who best to weigh that balance? Not the politicians, whose views can be weighted by public appetite for law and order; nor the fleeing drivers, certainly.

Advances in technology mean some chases can be readily called off and the vehicle traced in less heated scenarios. Police often know who the driver is, and can track them to their boltholes soon enough.

But when police need to intervene immediately, it is best left to the trained professionals to call the shots.

Police pursuits - as much as we all are likely to hold strong views on their practice, given our lives too are on the line - are an operational matter for officers. The Police Commissioner will be well aware he is responsible for the outcomes of operations.

It is well that these procedures are reviewed rigorously and regularly. Pursuits are high-stakes operations that politicians and the public will be watching keenly.