Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
The use of a police dog in an arrest that left a woman with a serious bite injury was "unjustified and excessive", the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) has found.
It also found the dog handler made false statements about the stolen car the woman was in crashing into his police vehicle.
On 13 February 2021 the dog handler located a stolen car in Christchurch.
Inside was a man and a woman wanted for multiple burglaries, and police believed they may have been carrying firearms, the report said.
The handler pursued the car for less than two minutes, and road spikes were deployed.
It then drove into a cul-de-sac, where the man reported the handler rammed the car with his police vehicle.
The couple then fled on foot and the woman hid behind a hedge, with no real means of escape.
The IPCA also said "the dog handler says he did not see who was behind the hedge before he sent the dog in to apprehend the person".
The woman received a serious dog bite to her leg.
"It is unreasonable to set a dog on an unknown person, who is neither escaping nor using force to resist arrest, for no other reason than that they may have a firearm, when there is no good cause to suspect that they actually do," IPCA chair Judge Colin Doherty said.
"Therefore, the use of the dog was unjustified and excessive."
The IPCA report also found the pursuit was an inappropriate, but the use of road spikes was reasonable.
Police initially charged the man for driving into the officer's police car, "however, they later realised the damage to the cars was not consistent with the collision as described by the dog handler, so the charges were withdrawn".
"The investigating officer failed to adequately investigate the collision between the police car and fleeing car. He also submitted a Traffic Crash Report which was factually incorrect and supported charging the man with offences he did not commit," the report said.
Police response
Relieving Canterbury District Commander Superintendent Karyn Malthus acknowledged the findings by the IPCA in relation to the decision to release the dog.
"The threat of firearms is something we expect officers to treat extremely seriously," Malthus said.
"A criminal investigation was carried out in relation to the [dog handler], and it was determined there was no evidential sufficiency to support a criminal charge," she said.
"Police accept there were errors made during our investigation into the crash...The officer who carried out the investigation has had this addressed with them."
Canterbury Police had since changed the way they investigated police crashes to ensure independence and timeliness, she said.