The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) have ruled that an officer risked public safety when a pursuit ended up on the Wellington waterfront last year.
The pursuit took place in the afternoon of Friday 8 April and it "put the public at unnecessary and unjustified risk," according to the IPCA report released on Wednesday.
An officer in an unmarked police car was pursuing a Wellington driver after they failed to stop and the chase ended up on the Wellington waterfront, a predominantly pedestrian area.
The driver gained access to the waterfront due to a missing bollard, the cars then continued along the waterfront, over a pedestrian footbridge, past Frank Kitts Park and towards the TSB Bank Arena.
The IPCA estimated that the officer followed the Mitsubishi driver at a speed of between 47.7 and 59.85 kilometres per hour along the waterfront, which was crowded with people at the time.
"It was a sunny day. The waterfront was busy and the crowd included groups of school-age children; in the words of one witness "there were children everywhere," the IPCA said.
"Two witnesses said they were forced to leap over the side of the footbridge and cling onto metal beams hanging above the lagoon to avoid the cars. A group of children were forced to the edge of the waterfront to avoid the cars."
The IPCA says "the officer should have abandoned the pursuit as soon as it became apparent that the driver of the Mitsubishi was able to access the waterfront area."
The driver and passenger of the Mitsubishi were arrested shortly after, but at the time the Police Central Communications Centre were not aware that the car had been pursued along the waterfront.
The Mitsubishi driver had failed to stop after they had stolen a radar detector from a parked car on Vivian Street, Wellington.
Authority Chair Sir David Carruthers said the risk to public increased as the pursuit continued along the waterfront, and it is "unacceptable that members of the public had to jump out of the way and climb over bridges to escape harm."
"The officer's decision to pursue the Mitsubishi, as well as the manner and speed of his driving, put the public at unjustified risk."
Police have accepted the IPCA's findings that the pursuit was no longer justified once it entered the waterfront.
Acting Wellington district commander superintendent Steve Kehoe says at that point the officer in the unmarked car "should have recognised the extreme risk to members of the public and abandoned the pursuit immediately."
" We also accept the finding that the lack of any communications by the officer while he was pursuing on the waterfront meant that the pursuit controller had insufficient information to manage this aspect of the incident, and had no knowledge of how the pursuit had progressed or of the significant risks involved," he says.
"Fleeing driver situations are often complex and require our staff to make difficult decisions in rapidly evolving circumstances, but we acknowledge that better communication and risk assessment could have been used in this instance."
Police also noted that a Police crash investigator had "established beyond reasonable doubt that the officer pursued the Mitsubishi at an average speed of 39kph."
"We acknowledge the Authority has reached a different view based on the threshold of balance of probabilities."
The officer in question was charged with dangerous driving. He pleaded guilty and was discharged without conviction on March 1 2017.
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