A new police chase policy has been introduced, acknowledging that more offenders have been fleeing and a smaller proportion of those fleeing offenders have been arrested in recent years.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said the changes are a "re-balancing".
He said the changes "add the potential" for officers to pursue when an offender flees and there's a "high risk of ongoing serious harm".
"It does acknowledge that in the preceding period we've had an increase in the number of fleeing driver events and a decrease in the proportion of those being apprehended," Coster added. "[The new framework] is likely to see police pursuing more.
"We recognise there has been a public demand for a stronger focus on apprehensions.
"This is an incredibly difficult area though, there are risks on either side."
Asked about the dangers of more police chases on New Zealand's roads, Coster said the risk to the public has increased as a result of more offenders fleeing, whether police pursue the offenders or not.
"So what we're aiming for with this policy is to reduce the number of people who flee from police and increase safety overall.
"We're looking for a sweet spot in terms of what police do and how offenders respond to that," Coster said.
'The public have demanded some change'
Police Association president Chris Cahill told 1News he is "relatively comfortable" with the change.
"I've always said there's no perfect fleeing driver policy," Cahill said, adding the new policy is "probably" better than the existing one.
"There's been a 106% increase in people fleeing police since 2020, so I think the public have demanded some change.
"They've also got to be prepared that it might go wrong on occasions.
"We don't want to see police officers getting blamed, being put in trouble when it goes wrong, when it's the person who decided to flee that's really caused the issue."
However, Cahill would also like to see more pursuit training for new officers, he said.
'They'd swung the pendulum a bit too far'
At a post-Cabinet news conference this afternoon, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said "there were legitimate public safety concerns" about earlier police chase policies.
"But I also think that by the time I became Minister of Police there was an acknowledgement that maybe they'd swung the pendulum a bit too far," he said. Hipkins was Police Minister from June last year to January this year.
"As a result we were seeing an increased number of fleeing drivers because they felt they had a sense of impunity.
"And so I know the police have been working really hard to get the balance right here,
"The people putting public safety at risk are not the police, it is the people trying to outrun the police."
The 'refreshed' police chase policy
Coster explained that the decision to pursue begins with the officer at the scene.
"However, anyone involved can call off the pursuit," he said. "The pursuit controller in the communications centre, the driver of the police vehicle, or the passenger in the police vehicle, or their supervisor."
Asked what could lead to a chase being called off, Coster said: "I won't go into fine detail because clearly there's a real interest in offenders not knowing what police will do.
"But it's fair to say that if the risk presented by the pursuit exceeds the value of continuing it, then that's where the balance shifts."
As part of the latest policy, a new "Fleeing Driver Framework" has been introduced, described as a "decision support tool".
"It factors in the threat posed by the driver/occupant(s), or on the seriousness of an offence suspected to have been committed by them, and the risk of them committing ongoing offending, harm, or victimisation," a statement announcing the changes said.
The new policy only comes about two-and-a-half-years since the last update, in December 2020.
SHARE ME