Gran calls for ban on police pursuits

Alt Tv/Fleet FM Breakfast News Comment
Gran calls for ban on police pursuits
The grandmother of an Auckland boy seriously hurt in a freak accident during a police chase wants pursuits abolished as police reveal they have made 6000 of them in three years. Nisha Ali's grandson, Farhat Buksh, 13, suffered serious head injuries after being hit by a lamp-post that toppled on to a Mt Albert pedestrian crossing in August, felled by a police car pursuing a suspected drunk driver. Nearly three months later, he can attend school for only a few hours a day. "He's not well ... He'll probably be a year behind," Ms Ali said. In future, she said, police should simply note dangerous drivers' registration numbers and speak to them later. Her comments follow the publication of a police review into pursuits in the past three years. It shows that, between April 2004 and May 2007, police took part in more than 6000 pursuits, an average of 162 a month. Twelve people were killed in crashes resulting from police chases and 106 were injured. Once upon a time in NZ you couldn’t join the cops until you were 30years of age, effectively we had MEN doing the job, these days we let anyone become a cop, dropped the age limit and effectively have BOYS who are cops. In the UK they spend 3 months training to drive in chase situations, in NZ the course is a couple of weeks, you can’t simply allow people to race away from the Police without chase, you can however train the Police much better than we currently do and put into place policy that minimizes contact (ie, if the car isn’t recorded as stolen, trace the owner and see them the next day). Allowing pumped up, ill trained cops chase 12 people to death over 3 years isn’t a positive outcome.