Today’s correspondent asks about police custody. They say:

There was a video posted on Facebook of a car in Alice Springs doing burnouts at traffic lights, with a police paddy wagon at the lights watching. Reports we’re that the tyres were spiked at a location out of town later on. Obviously, there are operational decisions that come into play as to the police decision as the question was put as to why the police didn’t activate their lights to actually warn other traffic? One person said that as soon as they activated their lights the driver would technically be in custody in the event of the driver panicking, crashing and injuring the occupants. My argument was that regardless of the lights being on, any crash would have been considered a death in custody if a fatality occurred as “in custody” would have occur as soon as police became aware of the activity, much the same as a death in custody investigation would occur even if a pursuit had been terminated. When does the definition of in custody occur. Does it vary between jurisdiction as this was NT based?

First, time and space don’t allow me to do a cross jurisdictional comparison so I’ll limit my answer to the NT but I suspect it would be similar in all states and territories. Second I debated answering this question as it is on the margin of this blog’s scope. I discuss police in their role in emergency management but this is not a blog about criminal law or policing across the range of police activities.  But stopping ‘hoon’ driving may be an emergency and further the brief answer I’m going to give was relatively simple.

If we limit the answer to issues of deaths in custody that are then examinable by the coroner, the Coroners Act 1993 (NT) s 12 says that the death ‘of a person who, immediately before death, was a person held in care or custody’ is a reportable death and must be reported to the coroner ‘as soon as possible by the person under whose care or in whose custody the deceased person was held’ (s 12(5)).  The phrase ‘a person who, immediately before death, was a person held in … custody’ means (relevantly):

(a) a person in the custody or control of:

(i) a police officer; …

and includes a person in the process of being taken into or escaping from:

(c) the custody or control of a person mentioned in paragraph (a)…

If there is a pursuit, then the person is ‘escaping from’ the police and is deemed to have been in custody.  If police merely turned their red/blue lights on to notify others that would not imply that the person was in custody but of course the ‘hoon’ may infer that the police are intending to pull them over and may well race off to avoid that in which case, they may be taken to be attempting to ‘escape’ and a coroner may take the view that they were in custody.  Of course, just because a death is reportable it does not follow that the coroner will hold an inquest or that anyone will be criticised for their conduct.

Conclusion

As I say this question is on the margin of this blog’s scope so I’m not going to try and find relevant coronial case law on the question of custody.  For the purposes of today’s question the definition of ‘person held in … custody’ is given above.

This blog is made possible with generous financial support from the Australasian College of Paramedicine, the Australian Paramedics Association (NSW), Natural Hazards Research Australia, NSW Rural Fire Service Association and the NSW SES Volunteers Association. I am responsible for the content in this post including any errors or omissions. Any opinions expressed are mine, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or understanding of the donors.