Pursuits are still better than letting drivers flee
Flowers left at the corner of Idris and Glandovey roads in memory of Kenneth McCaul, who was killed following a police pursuit of another vehicle.
It’s been a week since the devastating tragedy that claimed the life of Kenneth McCaul, whose car was T-boned by a fleeing driver who ran a red light, in a bid to evade police. Like me, I’m sure most Cantabrians have felt sick every time they have passed through the Glandovey/Idris Road intersection, since last Tuesday.
The tragedy swiftly reignited another entrenched debate on the epidemic of fleeing drivers and the merits of police pursuits.
What a pity we don’t get equally exercised by the truly despicable parking impasse that led Kenneth to routinely drive to work at Christchurch Hospital at such an ungodly hour, and sleep in his vehicle for a few hours before work, merely to secure a car park.
The Ministry of Health should hang their heads in collective shame that their sustained negligence and repeated failure to actively front-foot the establishment of a hospital staff car park building has now contributed to the needless loss of life. It is the dereliction of public duty, writ large.
But back to the scourge of fleeing drivers, which Christchurch ignominiously leads the nation’s stakes in. Every week in the Garden City, we average 10 fleeing driver incidents, the highest rate per capita anywhere in New Zealand. Fleeingdriver incidents have doubled over the past decade, with the first six months of 2019 clocking up more incidents than in the entirety of 2010.
As you’ll be aware, Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft is doubling down on his call for the police to stop pursuing young people behind the wheel, who refuse to stop, because they thrive on the thrill of the chase – often splattering it all over social media.
But as the police point out, it’s very hard to ascertain the age of a driver in a fast-moving car, particularly in the dead of night, when most pursuits are triggered.
The Christchurch tragedy has also seen the usual anti-authoritarian suspects spout off, like Auckland barrister Deborah Manning. She’s dusted off her demands for an immediate ban on police pursuits, arguing police should simply take note of the rego plate and apprehend them later.
But as a recent Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) review lays bare, 20-25 per cent of vehicles involved in pursuits are stolen, so they’d get off scot free.
Manning also believes that deploying road spikes is a better bet than chasing offenders. Has she forgotten that three teenagers died in Blenheim Road after hitting road spikes earlier this year? The police can’t win.
Consider the circumstances as to what prompted last week’s pursuit. A vehicle being driven erratically at 4am. How could that not arouse suspicion? If the police hadn’t pursued this car and someone was still killed, just imagine the ensuing public backlash. The police can’t win.
As much as the focus has been on fleeing young drivers, the recent IPCA review on this national scourge belies the media narrative. Of the 191 randomly selected cases probed and the 77 crash cases investigated by the authority, the median fleeing driver age was 25. Just over half had served jail time, nearly half had previous form as a fleeing driver and two-thirds of drivers were unlicensed. Most chillingly, the vast majority of drivers had serious criminal history, averaging 16 convictions.
To suggest most fleeing drivers are impulsive and misguided youth is a fiction – the majority are serious, persistent offenders.
In time, advances in technology may help assuage the need for white-knuckle police pursuits. In Auckland, the police’s Eagle helicopter is deployed in the vast majority of fleeing driver incidents – Christchurch needs a police chopper.
In the United States, GPS trackers can be shot out of a car-mounted device on to a fleeing vehicle, enabling the police to track it without pursuing it. American authorities have also been investigating electronic discharge technologies that kill a car’s engine, but testing so far has been unable to isolate the impact to a single vehicle.
But for all the imperfections of police pursuits, the pile-on against the blue line in the past week has been unsavoury.
How many more innocent lives would be lost if the cops were paralysed from pursuing the reprobates of society, when they pose as a glaring public safety threat on the road?
If the police hadn’t pursued this car and someone was still killed, just imagine the ensuing public backlash.