Mr Atiq said the woman who allegedly stole the car, a 28-year-old from Auckland, drove through a fence on the car owner's property before driving off at speed.
She had driven towards the Onerahi shopping centre before turning right into Hinemoa St or Cartwright Rd and into Tainui St, where she allegedly slammed into two cars before hitting the police car.
The woman had then stopped and tried to flee from police but was arrested.
The two cars sustained serious damage, while damage to the police vehicle was minor. No one was injured in the pursuit.
Mr Atiq said the woman was taken to Whangarei Hospital for a mental health assessment.
"If the pursuit had gone for longer, police may have abandoned the chase due to safety concerns," he said.
Charges against the woman were likely to follow.
Northland police have had to deal with a number of people driving off from officers in the past few months. The Government is introducing tougher penalties for those who flee police.
Police Minister Michael Woodhouse said the law would be changed to beef up penalties, the new regime to be in place from 2017.
He said similar measures had reduced the "boy-racer" problem and believed new penalties would cause some offenders to pause and think.
Changes would include:
-Increasing existing mandatory driver licence disqualification periods for failure-to-stop offences to six months for the first offence, 12 months for the second, and 24 months for third and subsequent offences.
-Mandatory vehicle confiscation for second and subsequent failure-to-stop offences within a four-year period. Courts will be given the ability to confiscate an offender's vehicle for any first offences.
-Allowing police to impound vehicles used to flee for up to 28 days, if it is reasonable to believe the person who owns it is withholding information on who was driving.
"These penalties will be on top of any prior offences they may have committed that brought them to police's attention in the first place," Mr Woodhouse said.
There are about 2300 failure-to-stop incidents every year, and that rate has risen recently.