TV Doco.

[Lou Girardin]

Without wanting to revive the whole Whangarei Police chase debate again (seriously!).
I watched the State TV reconstruction and investigation of this incident last night.
What interested me most of all was Erin Burgess's father and Uncle receiving letters from the Police, informing them of their right to cross-examine witnesses at the coroners hearing. These arrived THREE weeks after the hearing. The letters were dated prior to the hearing, but post-marked the day before receipt.
In addition, the first Police investigation discounted eyewitness evidence from Erin's boyfriend and her Mother; because, "they were emotionally involved".
But there is no cover-up. Perish the thought!

[k14]

Yeah, I saw a bit of it. Seems a bit of a crock.

It was easy to see that those cops that were chasing the biker were not going to give up even they were told to a few times. Lets hope that they act a little more sensibly in the future. What's done is done and they can only learn from what happened. It was a pretty sad thing to happen so lets just hope that it doesn't happen again.

But I don't like the way the cops handled it, they were definately partially if not fully to blame, the definately antagonised the situation and 200kph is definately way too fast to be chasing someone in the day, let alone the night.

[Two Smoker]

Hhhmmmm, whilst knowing Erin, i still dont think this could have been avoided, that guy on the motorbike was soo drunk and high that he probably would have coontinued at those speeds no matter what......

[scumdog]

Without wanting to revive the whole Whangarei Police chase debate again (seriously!).
I watched the State TV reconstruction and investigation of this incident last night.
What interested me most of all was Erin Burgess's father and Uncle receiving letters from the Police, informing them of their right to cross-examine witnesses at the coroners hearing. These arrived THREE weeks after the hearing. The letters were dated prior to the hearing, but post-marked the day before receipt.
In addition, the first Police investigation discounted eyewitness evidence from Erin's boyfriend and her Mother; because, "they were emotionally involved".
But there is no cover-up. Perish the thought!

I'll agree with you Lou, the whole deal was less than flash, from the actual crash to the follow on investigation and beaurocratic bungling.
Here's hoping it will tighten up things for the future.

The backlash is that down here a really drunk driver did runner in his ute and crashed, the booze-bus guys hauled him out of his ute as it went under in a creek. His excuse for doing the runner (as he told the Judge) was he had heard that if you did over a 100 mph the cops would call off the chase!!

[merv]

As you say don't really want to go over the whole thing again but as I remember it the Police said at the time the guy was known to them, so they could have just picked him up another time instead of worrying about him going a wee bit quick in the first place and by chasing him he did a runner.

The Burgess family certainly don't seemed to have been treated very well given that late notice about the Coroner and there is absolutely no doubt Erin was the innocent party in all this.

[NotaGoth]

None of it adds up, from officers failing to stop the chase, to the letters it's become pretty obvious as to whats happening (my personal thoughts on this, sorry to those who think differently). But as though the cops would apologize cause all it would mean if they do is that they are admitting they were in the wrong. It's called covering their asses.

[Skyryder]

I did not see the story and it is unfortunate that a death has resulted from a Police chase. But if you are going to do a runner and you get injured or killed in the process you have no one else to blame other than yourself.

Skyryder

[Fluffy Cat]

Yeah i agree with skyrider but and this is a big but investigations should be open fair and truthful.This means that our law enforcers should also be open fair and truthful(now that could be a bit tricky) this is a problem when investigating yourself.Police have this thing called corroboration of evidence.This means that after the event the involved officers can get together and "get their facts straight"fine if you are dealing with open fair and truthful characters.Not so good when there is a bit of pressure ie loss of job manslaughter conviction etc hanging over your head.

[Paul in NZ]

Paul sucks his breathin and opens the door for the other lunatics....

And is this possibly the other edge of the sword that has been discussed at enormous length on another topic....

The Police cannot say, "Yeah, well, sorry about that, with hindsight we could have handled it better and our actions were partially responsible for Erins death." can they?

No.. Because within a nano second of the ink drying her parents will be surrounded by well meaning lawyers convincing them that it is their duty to bring a private prosecution and before we know it they will be totally responsible and paying millions....

In actual fact, it was the arsehole on the bike's 'fault' (well, 99% of it)

So.. Did the Police do their job? Could they have picked him up later?? Or, did they know darn well who it was and they were pretty damn keen to get ahold of him then and there (for other reasons).... It's just to simple to say, let someone in a control room call it off, when there may be a lot of other local factors to deal with. There is a possibility that this is not simply someone not doing their job.

And now we have other morons who believe if they drive fast and dangerously the police will simply 'let them go'? (sigh)

Perhaps all people issued with driving licenses ought to given an IQ test as well??

Cheers

[riffer]

I reckon if they'd called off the chase the guy would have just continued going the way he was - an "accident" waiting to happen.

With the benefit of hindsight maybe they should have just shot out his tyres.

Clown like that gives us all a bad name...

[Paul in NZ]

I reckon if they'd called off the chase the guy would have just continued going the way he was - an "accident" waiting to happen.

With the benefit of hindsight maybe they should have just shot out his tyres.

Clown like that gives us all a bad name...

Hey! Thats not fair!

I've done my fair share to give us a bad name too

Hard to know if he would or would not have and I guess thats the point. The Police on the spot need to decide and we should support them if they occasionally get it wrong. It's not a perfect world, the bad guys don't all wear beagle boys outfits and the right choice is not always obvious.

Unfortunately, we are becoming a more 'blame' oriented society and this prevents them from putting their hand up sometime. 'Cos if they do, everyone piles in on them.

Then again, maybe, just maybe someone was really enjoying driving their commondoor as fast as they could......

Paul in NZ

[riffer]

Then again, maybe, just maybe someone was really enjoying driving their commondoor as fast as they could......

All the more reason the police should go back to Falcon Forte's.

At least they were limited to 160km/hr. Apparently they had a dodgy driveshaft that made them dangerous to go any faster...

[Quasievil]

I see absolutely no reason why a member of the police should be engaged in sppeds beyond 160km/hr if a situation requires any more speed they should back out and live another day.
Its not safe for the police themselves and its not safe for the public and its not safe for the bad guy. If he gets away so what, what goes around comes around.
I have personally been in a police acar chasing a motorcyclist at 200 km/hr in similiar circumstances to that of the Doco, the chase was called of and the police continued despite this fact, the motorcyclist (VTR1000) did nearly crash on a bend at the end of Te Kawhata striaghts but luckily didnt.
We got him in the end.
The whole chase took 13 odd minutes and involved two police cars and some coming down from papakura, it was adrenalin and pride thinking ,not sensible saftey minded actions at the wheel.
Cops should not be going faster than 160, if the boy racers etc take this as a angle to get away ,so what? at the end of the day they will get caught or whatever.

[riffer]

Cops should not be going faster than 160, if the boy racers etc take this as a angle to get away ,so what? at the end of the day they will get caught or whatever.

Agree with you Quasi. Unfortunately, the whatever quite often is killing an unfortunate innocent.

However, if the cops can get the licence number of the car, then give up the chase.

Penalise the owner of the car. I don't give a fuck if they were driving it or not. Let's bring some personal responsibility back into society.

You should never allow your car to be driven by someone you don't trust.

But if you are driving or riding someone else's vehicle, treat it with respect. If you fuck up on the road in someone else's vehicle and get seen by the police, be a man and own up to it. Stop and take your medicine.

And if you are stupid enought to lend your vehicle to someone who won't take their medicine then you should pay for it yourself.

Just my right-wing $0.02

[spudchucka]

There will be more to come from this incident for sure and on the face of it, (the 20/20 report) it doesn't look that flash for the police staff involved. I'm sure however that there is an aweful lot more to the story than was portrayed on the TV on Sunday night. There is now an "independant" person from Australia reviewing the incident and the subsequent investigation who will report directly to the office of the commisioner. Hopefully in the end something good will come out of it.