Page 1267 - Week 04 - Thursday, 8 May 2014
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The AFP national guideline, “ACT Policing: urgent duty driving and pursuits”, outlines the circumstances in which police are authorised to engage in pursuits, as well as when it is prudent to terminate because of safety concerns. All operational members of ACT Policing receive training in relation to this guideline.
ACT Policing’s guidelines align with the Australia New Zealand police pursuit principles developed by the Australia New Zealand Police Advisory Agency, of which ACT Policing is a member. In many respects ACT Policing’s definition of a pursuit exceeds that defined by the ANZPAA pursuit principles.
The guideline clearly articulates the considerations that drivers of a police vehicle and the operations sergeant must take into account. Should any of these considerations outweigh the purpose for urgent duty driving, the pursuit will be terminated. Under the guidelines a direction to terminate the pursuit may be given by a member in the vehicle who is senior in rank or experience to the driver, the team leader of the driver, a member performing the duties of superintendent or above, or the operations sergeant monitoring and oversighting the incident.
All pursuits undertaken by ACT Policing officers are oversighted by the police pursuit review committee, which reviews all pursuits to analyse trends and issues. The committee reports to the ACT Policing executive and any trends are raised through regular management meetings.
The committee reviews all police pursuit driving incidents, identifies any problems or patterns developing in AFP driver behaviour, identifies any training requirements, makes recommendations in relation to cancellation or suspension of a member’s driving authority, and recommends amendments to the pursuits guidelines.
A written report is provided to the Deputy Chief Police Officer (Response) each quarter regarding trends, training issues, welfare or personnel management matters, following any major incident involving a police pursuit, or at any other time that the committee considers it necessary.
The police pursuit review committee is comprised of senior members of ACT Policing, the superintendent operations and superintendent traffic, the superintendent judicial operations, a district superintendent and the AFP’s chief driving instructor. Any pursuit which results in a police collision is also investigated in accordance with the relevant requirements, which includes investigation or oversight by the collision investigation and reconstruction team.
Turning to the issues of reviews of policy, the adequacy and appropriateness of the AFP national guideline “ACT Policing: urgent duty driving and pursuits” has been the subject of a number of recent independent and internal reviews, including a review in 2007 by Mr Alan Cameron, a former Commonwealth Ombudsman.
In order to facilitate the ongoing monitoring of police pursuits in the ACT, the performance evaluation and review team has maintained the database established during internal reviews. The database provides ongoing data collection allowing for ready access and reliable analysis of pursuit information in the ACT.
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