Police rivalry added to motorway chaos

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Tension between rival police crash investigators is disclosed in a report into the debacle last month after motorway ramp closures created one of Auckland's biggest traffic jams.

The report, obtained under the Official Information Act, contains more explicit criticism of various unidentified officers than the summary the police issued three weeks ago along with an apology to thousands of commuters caught in four hours of motorway chaos.

Written by Inspector Jim Wilson, the report faults the incident controller, a senior sergeant whose name is blanked out, for a lack of strategic overview of the impact of freezing a vital motorway entrance to central Auckland and for relying too heavily on advice of city serious crash investigation head Sandy Beckett.

The controller admitted in written advice to a police debriefing that he had no expertise in serious crash investigations and was guided by Sergeant Beckett about the time needed for a proper examination.

Although he called extra investigators from the North Shore-Waitakere police district to speed things up, he confessed: "At no stage did I consider reopening any of the roads until the crash investigation had been completed."

Sergeant Beckett's name is also deleted from the report, as are those of most others at the scene of the early morning two-car crash on July 12 at the intersection of Fanshawe St and Beaumont St.

But he confirmed his involvement at the time, telling the Herald his staff were keenly aware of a need to balance public inconvenience with that of gathering reliable forensic evidence from potentially fatal road smashes.

Mr Wilson said the incident controller's deferral to Sergeant Beckett and a failure to assume command and control of the crash scene led to serious traffic delays which could, and should, have been avoided.

Once the scene was safeguarded, and firefighters had spent almost 40 minutes cutting a driver from the burnt wreck of a vehicle which ran a red light, the investigation began without due consideration that reopening the ramps was a priority.

There was a failure to consider all options for clearing the scene, particularly marking out the crash debris and then moving it, and the report accused Sergeant Beckett of not considering using the most up-to-date equipment to hasten the task.

The report noted tension between him and staff of the North Shore-Waitakere crash unit, which is responsible for investigating motorway smashes, because he "erroneously" failed to accept their offer of photographic survey equipment called photogrammetry.

By the time they offered the equipment, his investigation using a theodolite was an hour old and he decided not to switch tactics, a judgment which Inspector Wilson said prolonged traffic delays.

Sergeant Beckett said after the crash he did not have enough faith in the accuracy of the equipment.

The report says initial actions by police and other emergency services were managed very well but an on-call photographer had to travel from his home in Waiuku, taking up to an hour to reach the crash site.

A crash investigator arrived about half an hour after the 5.17am crash and immediately began marking positions of vehicles and skid marks.

But the photographer, who got to the scene at about 6.30am, asked for it to be "frozen" until daylight and police did not consider borrowing emergency Fire Service lighting to allow him an earlier start.

The report said the time needed for the scene examination would have been greatly reduced had digital cameras been available to other police.

Not all police were oblivious to the level of public frustration as traffic banked up more than 20km along the Northern Motorway.

An inspector, Rob Lindsay, arrived at about 8.40am to assess progress before telling an unnamed officer he appreciated his work but felt it unnecessary and that he intended reopening road lanes.

This resulted in a "strong disagreement" before another officer arrived with advice that lanes could be cleared in 15 minutes, as finally happened at 9.15am.

The report also recommended that a single serious crash unit be formed.