No More Blood on the Tarmac: Ban Police Car Chases
On 28 May, the New Zealand Police killed 15-year-old Ihaia McPhee Maxwell and 12-year-old Meadow James in an unnecessary and brutal car chase. This crash brings the death toll of fatal pursuits up to five in the last month alone. On 19 May, a 15-year-old travelling in the boot of a car died when the vehicle crashed in a police pursuit. On 11 May, a 25 year old man died in a crash after a police pursuit in Kawerau. On 7 May yet another driver died, crashing into a power pole minutes after a pursuit was called off.
This is not the way to make communities safe. We demand that the New Zealand Police take responsibility for these deaths, and abolish the senseless practice of police chases entirely.
In 2009, New Zealand’s pursuit policy was reviewed by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) in response to growing concern over the high amounts of people being killed during pursuits.
It found that the Police’s eagerness to engage in pursuits, especially very high risk ones, is excessive in relation to the crime itself. These chases tend to cause far more harm than the offence which led to the pursuit in the first place, not only to the people being chased, but to the wider community.
The IPCA was established as an independent body to investigate Police misconduct, but it has almost no power to actually hold the Police to account in any meaningful way. It does not receive enough funding to complete many of its investigations, meaning the Police will in effect take over and manipulate the narrative in its own favour.
It also has no power to do anything other than recommend changes to the New Zealand Police, which can choose whether it wants to accept them. In response to the IPCA’s review of pursuits, the Police simply released their own report disagreeing with it. The report argues that pursuits are never unnecessary because, in the Police’s opinion, it makes sense to assume that any driver who fails to stop after being signalled is probably covering up evidence of, or intending to commit, a crime punishable by law. Therefore, according to the Police, it is always worth the risk, even though the overwhelming majority of these crimes end up being small misdemeanors. 1 in 4 of these pursuits end in a crash. Who is the bigger threat to public safety?
Because the Police has the power to decide who is a threat to public safety and who is not, it also has the power to decide whose lives are worth sacrificing. It can therefore decide that any death, if it’s caused by a police officer, is a necessary sacrifice to protect the good order of society. It can decide that the death of someone it has deemed a “criminal”, no matter how senseless, is not the same as the death of a human being.
The Police is never going to admit that its own risk assessments and procedures are wrong without meaningful pressure from the outside. Even when it admits that “abandoning a pursuit is the safest action to resolve a pursuit’, it still decides there is not enough evidence to support the banning of police pursuits. Instead of making any sort of meaningful change, the Police suggest that the only way to reduce deaths during pursuits is to introduce secondary units and new technology to the carnage. Not only does the Police refuse to scale down on car chases, it wants to spend more of its time and money on them. The problem is not that the Police doesn’t have the best tools and conditions to kill people with. It’s that they can kill people at all.
The blood of victims killed in car chases is on the Police’s hands. If the Police really wanted to protect communities, then high speed car chases would be absolutely unthinkable and inexcusable. The fact that it continues to engage in these senseless, deadly pursuits only shows how little regard it has for people’s lives. The IPCA, the only body we have to hold the Police accountable for its actions, does not have enough funding or authority to do its job. This means the Police has an unacceptable amount of power to excuse itself from any responsibility when it kills people.
Until all of us have the power to hold the Police accountable and control their behaviour, officers will continue to chase teenagers into trees and buildings. How many more broken bodies have to be cut from mangled car wrecks before we end the bloodshed? We demand a complete end to police pursuits, and an Independent Police Conduct Authority with the power to make binding decisions and truly hold the Police to account.
By Jessica Lim, Aaliyah Zionov, and Emilie Rākete
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