used excessive force, but did not recommend prosecuting the officer<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe family is now asking for that recommendation to be ignored, and for prosecution to go ahead.<\/p>\n
At the High Court in Wellington on Monday, the family’s lawyer Christopher Stevenson KC said when the officer shot Price point blank, the young man was running for his life.<\/p>\n
Previously, his lawyers argued police had not provided adequate information to support the decision not to prosecute.<\/p>\n
“Given the alarming rate of fatal police shootings, particularly of young M\u0101ori men, it is critical that more information is provided so that what happened can be properly understood,” they said.<\/p>\n
Monday’s hearing was attended more than a dozen members of Price’s family and friends – including his grandmother, mother, sister and aunt.<\/p>\n
Stevenson told the court Officer A – whose name has been suppressed – shot Price “point blank in the chest” while he attempted to car jack another vehicle after fleeing a routine traffic stop, driving dangerously and ramming a police car.<\/p>\n
He said the ICPA’s investigation acknowledged, contrary to the officer’s testimony, it was unlikely that the officer saw a high risk of harm from Price as her fled police while under fire.<\/p>\n
Stevenson pointed out police fired on Price’s vehicle and continued to fire at him as ran, with his back to officers, before he attempted to hijack another vehicle.<\/p>\n
Stevenson said a witness in the second vehicle described Price offering $500 if they would drive him away from the scene and quoted the witness’s testimony as saying: “He was just scared and wanted to get away. He was terrified.”<\/p>\n
“Officer A arrives at the driver’s side of the vehicle and it’s at this point that he shoots the unarmed Mr Price point blank in the chest,” Stevenson said.<\/p>\n
Stevenson told the court the IPCA investigation into the shooting found Officer A’s contention that he believed Price was going for a weapon at that point was “implausible and improbable”.<\/p>\n
“The essential facts are not in dispute. By the time he was in the vehicle he was not a threat to officer or to the passengers in the vehicle – who described him as ‘terrified’ – the only conceivable threat was driving away,” Stevenson said.<\/p>\n
Another lawyer for Price’s family, Max Harris, said the IPCA’s investigation had failed in its obligations under the Bill of Rights to be independent, impartial, prompt, thorough and transparent – and the process had undermined the effectiveness and the credibility of the investigation.<\/p>\n
Stevenson noted it took two weeks before Officer A was interviewed about the shooting and during the process the officer was allowed to refer to pre-written notes.<\/p>\n
He said interview transcripts revealed a troubling familiarity with how the officer was treated – including being referred to as “mate” 14 times during the process.<\/p>\n
“[Officer A] was never appropriately pressed on his account and never appropriately challenged,” Stevenson said.<\/p>\n
He said it was concerning the officer was treated primarily as “a witness rather than a suspect” in their testimony regarding the incident.<\/p>\n
He cited concerns over the independence of interviewing officers, noting that interviewers came from the same region and one had been trained on interviewing procedures by Officer A’s lawyer.<\/p>\n
“There can be inadvertent and unconscious bias which we know from decades of social sciences,” Stevenson said.<\/p>\n
He said there was also a lack of transparency regarding the explanation for the IPCA’s decision not to prosecute Officer A and the family had been further traumatised by the 15-month delay in publishing the IPCA’s decision which was “provided in a conclusory form – absent of reasons”.<\/p>\n
Stevenson described the treatment of Price’s family in the investigation as “egregious” and said the disregard was further emphasised by the lack of information in support of the decision.<\/p>\n
Harris told the court the lapse of time before a decision was published should not impact the conclusions of the investigation of the case of “a profound failing by police”.<\/p>\n
He said the lack of reasoning to reinforce the investigation’s decision not to prosecute contradicted police and the authority’s obligations under the Bill of Rights.<\/p>\n
“The police should be aware they are subject to the Bill of Rights,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There doesn’t appear to be any recognition in relation to the correspondence [during the investigation] that police are aware of these considerations.”<\/p>\n
Harris told the court nearly 16 months had elapsed between the IPCA reaching the decision not to prosecute he officers involved in July 2023 and the report into the shooting being published in November the next year.<\/p>\n
He said that the single sentence from the report devoted to the reasoning behind the decision undermined the transparency and credibility of the ICPA’s conclusion.<\/p>\n
“Based on an assessment of the circumstance and the law relating [to] self defence and the defence of another (Section 48 of he Crimes Act), police has determined there is insufficient evidence to support criminal prosecution of the officers involved in this incident,” the report read.<\/p>\n
Harris said it was difficult to see how any response from the ICPA could counter the lack of promptness in their handling of the case.<\/p>\n
“The information that was supplied was eeked out following delays only after increasingly assertive requests [from the family’s lawyers]” Harris said.<\/p>\n
Harris said the IPCA had failed to follow “obvious lines of inquiry” concerning the officer’s decision to use a firearm rather than a taser which have been available to him and other officers at the scene.<\/p>\n
“Why was Officer A so confident about the precision of the use of a firearm in the incident and not about the use of a taser?” he said.<\/p>\n
He said questions raised over the independence of interviewing officers, Officers A’s choice of lethal force and assessment of the risks posed by Price “were not followed up” in the course of he investigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The family of Kaoss Price is seeking a judicial review of the Independent Police Conduct Authority’s (IPCA) investigation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-592472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}