Use of a police dog to arrest a woman in Foxton, leaving her with "life-long injuries", was found to be unjustified by the Independent Police Conduct Authority in a report released Thursday.
Two officers, a dog handler and a constable, followed a car that had been driven dangerously to a rural property near Foxton on the night of October 4 2022, finding the car abandoned.
The dog handler used his dog to track the occupants of the car through dense bushes, later seeing two shadowy human figures ahead of him.
After calling out a warning to them and receiving no response, he released the dog.
The woman, who was the passenger in the car, was bitten on the lower leg while hiding in the bushes.
After she had been detained, the driver was tracked into a neighbouring paddock where he gave himself up without need for the use of the dog.
The arresting officers found that the woman had sustained serious injuries from the dog bite and called an ambulance to meet them at Palmerston North Police Station.
She was subsequently admitted to hospital for treatment, the wounds later requiring surgery.
The Authority has concluded that use of the dog was out of proportion to the offences the driver of the car had committed. The woman had committed no offence beyond being on a property without reasonable excuse – for which she had a valid defence.
Other options were available to the officers such as using the dog to track the suspects.
Authority Chair Judge Kenneth Johnson KC said that "a young woman suffered life-long injuries as a result of a poor decision by the dog handler."
"Officers need to consider carefully whether the injury that may be caused by a dog is proportionate to the offence the person is suspected of having committed.
"Not immediately surrendering to Police does not on its own mean that an officer is justified in releasing a dog.”
Central District Commander Superintendent Scott Fraser said that these situations are usually very fast-moving and that officers are trained to make "the best possible decisions in the moment."
“However, occasionally the decisions we make can have unfortunate impacts like in this incident, where someone who was not a significant offender or risk is badly injured,” he said.
While the District Police review of this incident supported the dog handler's actions, Commissioner of Police Andrew Coster accepted and agreed with the Authority's findings.
"The option to continue tracking, with the support of the second member present, was the right response," he said.
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