In the early morning hours of 26 May 2023, a stolen car with five occupants stopped near a liquor store in Dunedin. Some of the occupants broke into a container on the premises setting off the security alarm. The men stole several crates of beer. At about 1.25am, they fled from the premises. The car was seen by two officers in an unmarked Police car.

The officers commenced a brief pursuit of the car which lasted about a minute and covered approximately 1.6 kilometres. Police abandoned the pursuit because of the driver’s deteriorating manner of driving. As the Police car came to a stop, the driver of the fleeing car lost control and crashed. Mr Michael McClelland, a rear-seat passenger, died as a result of the crash.

The incident happened just before Police moved to the new fleeing driver policy. The Independent Police Conduct Authority has found that the officers should not have commenced a pursuit under the fleeing driver policy that applied at the time. In addition to commencing the pursuit, that previous policy was not complied with in the following respects:

• The driver of the Police vehicle, Officer A should have informed SouthComms that he was engaged in a pursuit on Hillside Road.
• Officer A should have engaged his Police car’s siren when he pursued Mr Z.
• The passenger in the Police vehicle, Officer B should have handled the Police radio communications.
• The SouthComms dispatcher should have instructed Officer A to abandon the pursuit.

The officers, however, appropriately abandoned the pursuit when it became dangerous.

We also concluded that Police driving was not a direct cause of the crash.

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