{"id":81412,"date":"2025-10-16T04:18:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81412\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T04:18:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T04:18:07","slug":"wellington-lives-graham-bloxham-wins-court-fight-with-police-over-driving-charge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81412\/","title":{"rendered":"Wellington Live\u2019s Graham Bloxham wins court fight with police over driving charge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bloxham, who was running for the mayoralty<\/a> at the time, was driving south on the motorway. He was heading towards a police incident at the Terrace Tunnel to get content for his media company, the Wellington Live Facebook page.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Herald confirmed that Graham Bloxham’s unique vehicle was impounded after the incident. <\/p>\n

He approached a roadblock set up by police near the tunnel.<\/p>\n

Constable Jake Gibbs, a witness in the hearing, was packing up the cordon when he said Bloxham\u2019s branded car approached.<\/p>\n

Bloxham appeared to be using his phone while driving, so Gibbs said he put on his lights and sirens and began following.<\/p>\n

Bloxham admitted using his phone to take a photo while driving.<\/p>\n

Police alleged he was signalled to stop, but he continued to The Terrace.<\/p>\n

Further up The Terrace, Bloxham pulled into a driveway and did a U-turn. Gibbs told him to stop, but Bloxham continued driving before pulling into another driveway. He continued to hold and operate his phone throughout the pursuit, police alleged.<\/p>\n

Gibbs said there were \u201cplenty\u201d of available places where Bloxham could have pulled over, but did not.<\/p>\n

Bloxham disputed this, saying he did not realise the police car behind him was trying to pull him over. Instead, he thought they were heading to the same incident he was.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as I realised he was for me, I did a U-turn and went into the driveway,\u201d he told the court.<\/p>\n

He rejected the idea that there were any spaces to pull over, saying, \u201cIt was chocka.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gibbs said many other cars were pulling over and making way for police.<\/p>\n

\"AA police photograph was presented to the court, showing Bloxham being served with papers at the police station.<\/p>\n

Gibbs said that, once Bloxham got out of his car, he walked towards him before walking away again. Gibbs asked for his driver\u2019s licence, which Bloxham refused, allegedly continuing to walk away while saying he had somewhere he needed to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t happy about that, got a little bit more grumpy,\u201d Gibbs said.<\/p>\n

Bloxham was then accused of resisting arrest during an attempt to handcuff him.<\/p>\n

Officers impounded his car and gave him and his dog a ride home.<\/p>\n

Lawyer Kevin Smith argued that Bloxham tried to pull over at a practicable location, as required by law.<\/p>\n

When being questioned by the prosecution about Gibbs\u2019 account, Bloxham became agitated in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs this guy a pathological liar or what?\u201d he asked during questioning. He was then asked to leave the court to speak with his lawyer.<\/p>\n

After returning, he admitted he could have stopped at the first driveway, but continued driving to the second one.<\/p>\n

In his closing statement, Smith said Bloxham acted as any reasonable person would in continuing to drive to find a safe place to pull over.<\/p>\n

In a decision released today, the JPs said police failed to produce enough evidence to prove that Bloxham failed to stop as soon as practicable, and the case had been thrown out.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is our view that, while Mr Bloxham\u2019s evidence at times was inconsistent, he did not have to prove anything,\u201d Clark and Beighton wrote.<\/p>\n

\"GrahamGraham Bloxham taking a photo of media outside the Wellington District Court after an appearance on a charge of failing to stop for police. Photo \/ Ethan Manera<\/p>\n

When the Herald contacted Bloxham for comment about his win, he advised that he was driving as he answered the phone, and hadn\u2019t seen the decision yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat really is nice to know.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood on the Wellington police. They have a hard job, and I\u2019m really, really, really dramatically excited that it worked out positively for everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve learned my lesson about touching the phone, and good luck to [mayor-elect] Andrew Little.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201cfrustrating to have to go to court five times\u201d on the charge, with hearings adjourned multiple times, and he encouraged others to challenge police charges if they believed they were the victims of injustice.<\/p>\n

\"InIn a now-deleted post by Graham Bloxham, he said he was handcuffed “so hard my wrists nearly bled”. Photo \/ Facebook<\/p>\n

His arrest first came to public attention after he posted on a Wainuiomata community Facebook page detailing the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday I got pulled over, arrested for failing to stop after he said I was driving dangerously, thrown in the back of a Skoda and my car was impounded fir [sic] 6 months,\u201d the post, from Bloxham\u2019s personal Facebook account, read.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe copper cuffed me so hard my wrists nearly bled, and I can hardly feel my thumbs nearly 24 hrs later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWTF is going on with WLG police. Has anyone had anything like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The post included a photo of a marked wrist, which appeared to be Bloxham\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Police have been contacted for comment.<\/p>\n

Ethan Manera<\/a> is a Wellington-based journalist covering Wellington issues, local politics and business in the capital. He can be emailed at ethan.manera@nzme.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bloxham, who was running for the mayoralty at the time, was driving south on the motorway. He was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,9092,682,62510,32294,13239,10039,1349,4189,4636,15124,2740,18361,10670,6187,21168,111,43,139,69,62511,1523,2738,28630,675,52,6202,102],"class_list":["post-81412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-against","tag-being","tag-bloxham","tag-charge","tag-charged","tag-controversial","tag-court","tag-driving","tag-facebook","tag-fight","tag-former","tag-graham","tag-hopeful","tag-lives","tag-mayoral","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offence","tag-over","tag-owner","tag-page","tag-police","tag-wellington","tag-wins","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81412","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=81412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}