The scene of a car crash following a suspected police pursuit. The Greens are calling for police pursuits to be far rarer.

The Green Party is pushing for the Government to make police pursuit policy more restrictive following the deaths of three teenagers fleeing the police earlier this week.

Green MP Gareth Hughes said he has contacted Police Minister Stuart Nash to make his party's wishes clear.

Hughes hoped that a new report from the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) on police pursuits, due out in February, will stir a conversation around police chase policy.

"No pursuit is worth the deaths of innocent bystanders or the potential offenders. Things just aren't working and current policies are making it worse," Hughes said.

The IPCA report would not make recommendations about policy, but would provide insights into common themes or causes.

Nevertheless, Hughes hoped the report would stir a conversation which could see the operational policy changed - despite the fact it was the fifth IPCA report on the topic since 2000.

He believed the country should move towards an Australian model which was generally much more restrictive.

New Zealand police have already changed their policy several times in recent years, with the decision about whether to abandon a chase now being made by a controller at the station, rather than than the officers on the scene.

Hughes noted that the Australian state of Queensland saw just 126 police chases over 2016, with zero road deaths as a result.

New Zealand, which has a population of roughly the same size, saw 3323 police pursuits, resulting in seven deaths.

"They have thousands less pursuits and zero deaths compared to New Zealand - where we've got the trend going up."

Nash was very wary of limiting police discretion in the area however, saying he backed officers to make the right decision and the Government couldn't hand the streets over to "unruly youth".

"It's my view that if we say the police are not going to pursue then all anyone needs to do if they are in a stolen vehicle is put the foot down for 10 seconds and they are away," Nash said.

He told Stuff he would read the IPCA report with interest but all police pursuit deaths were already avoidable if drivers just pulled over when signalled.

"Even though these latest three deaths were an absolute tragedy they were exceptionally avoidable. Keep in mind they were driving at 130 kilometres an hour through red lights in the middle of a city," Nash said.

Hughes worried that New Zealand was heading in the direction of the United States, where policies were more liberal and some estimate one person died every day as the result of a chase.

"The Greens would like to see the police pursuit policy that ensures pursuits only occur when it is absolutely necessary, with public safety at the fore. We must ask whether it is necessary to start a pursuit for offences such as speeding or careless driving, surely pursuits just exacerbate this."

Nash said there was no way New Zealand would end up like the US given chase policy was already "highly developed" with strong guidelines for police.

There were a number of processes and policies that police went through. The overarching principle was that public and police safety took precedent over the apprehension of a driver, he said. Nash did not know why the number of police chases and deaths were on the rise and said he would have to look more closely at the Queensland model before forming an opinion.

Hughes did not go as far as to call for an end to all police chases, but some activists had.

People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA) spokeswoman Emilie Rākete said police chases overwhelmingly caused more harm than the original offence which led to the pursuit.

"Every death in a police pursuit is a preventable death," Rākete said.

"Police starting high-speed, deadly car chases cause horrific crashes which would never have occurred otherwise. These pursuits need to be banned before more kids die.

"These families are now burying the burned corpses of their children because the police made a decision that did not value their lives.

"We can't pass a law to make teenagers stop misbehaving. We can absolutely pass a law to end these deadly, pointless car chases."

Police Assistant Commissioner for Road Policing Sandra Venables told Stuff in 2018 that police never took the decision to pursue lightly.

"We [police] have to strike a balance between the responsibility to protect life and the duty to enforce the law, but it's really up to the driver in these pursuits."

* Comments on this story are closed.