Police conf irm U-turn on car chases

Police will be chasing fleeing cars again, but they will still have to lay road spikes manually to stop drivers – a job that recently put an officer in hospital in a critical condition.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster officially announced the car chase U-turn yesterday, after a turbulent week during which frustrations over retail crime crystallised in the wake of the fatal stabbing of a Sandringham dairy worker.

Earlier this month, an officer was sent to hospital in a critical condition and needed extensive surgery after he was hit by a fleeing driver while laying road spikes.

Currently, road spikes are deployed manually, but police are looking at a remote-control type that fires across the road, protecting the officer more.

‘‘It is a high priority,’’ Coster said in an interview with Stuff yesterday. ‘‘That programme of work has been under way for some time . . . I don’t have a date, but we are working very hard towards having that clarity.

‘‘Laying tyre deflation devices, or spikes, is one of the highest-risk activities we undertake, in response to a very high risk presented by drivers when they flee,’’ he said.

Officers now have to notify the communications centre over what they were using as protection, like a lamppost, once the spikes had been deployed.

‘‘That’s just about getting people to pause, consider their own safety and be able to articulate what that protection is.’’

Coster said one of the new spike options looked promising, but procurement wasn’t straightforward.

‘‘When we deploy, we have to be confident it will be safe and not have unintended consequences.’’

Yesterday morning, police announced the car-chase policy change after Coster signalled a review to staff on Monday.

In December 2020, police told staff not to pursue fleeing drivers unless the threat posed outweighed the risk of harm by the pursuit.

Since then, there had been a significant increase in fleeing drivers and a sharp decrease in the proportion of offenders identified, Coster said.

Police are set to release details in the new year of a framework that will dictate to staff when a pursuit would be justified, balancing further harm if the offenders weren’t arrested and the initial potential threat of a pursuit.

‘‘I believe the coming revisions will achieve more balance, accepting that there is no perfect solution,’’ Coster said.

‘‘We know there is a desire for change and a perception that offenders are more brazen and more willing to take risks with their driving behaviour.’’

The policy shift comes after a post-pandemic increase in retail crime, such as ramraids or smash and grabs, despite a continuing overall decrease in crime. ‘‘There’s certainly been a shift in society’s mood. It is very difficult to get an evidence-based consideration of complex issues in any forum, be it social media [or] at times mainstream media,’’ he said.

Police are having to deal with the spillover of complex issues – including mental health and domestic violence – that have caused the rise in youth crime towards retail premises. Offenders realised that police were not chasing and had changed their behaviour.

‘‘It’s a recalibration based on the evidence that we have.’’