Vehicles impounded by police in Napier and Hastings for all offences, not just street racing. Inspector Matt Broderick said police impound about 25 cars per week in the area. Photo / Warren Buckland
Vehicles impounded by police in Napier and Hastings for all offences, not just street racing. Inspector Matt Broderick said police impound about 25 cars per week in the area. Photo / Warren Buckland
A set of warehouses in Napier are now home to hundreds of vehicles impounded after ongoing driving offences in the region.
Police revealed they have impounded about 25 cars per week in Napier and Hastings on average during 2022 for all offences.
Most do eventually return to their owners but there are some that will end up destroyed.
The number of vehicles impounded in Napier and Hastings has remained steady as police continue to encourage the community to be proactive in reporting dangerous drivers.
Skid marks on Whirinaki Rd after a number of cars did burnouts in the area on Monday evening. Photo / Paul Taylor
Inspector Matt Broderick, road policing manager for Eastern Police, said that members of the public were encouraged to get information and report it to the police if it was safe to do so when they saw any anti-social driving.
"Most people carry some form of recording device these days and if they can record safely and not put themselves in danger, what's going on and the registration number, and forward that to the police then we will follow up that information," Broderick said.
He said police impounded about 25 cars per week in Napier and Hastings on average during 2022 for all offences, not just ones related to street racing.
"Of those 25, between five and seven of them would be for specific street racing offences."
He said the week September 16 to September 22 saw 28 vehicles impounded.
He said the average figure has been fairly constant for the past year, with no significant upward or downward trends to note.
He said police impounded any car that has been involved in anti-social user behaviour.
"We will take that car off them for 28 days, it automatically removes the warrant, if indeed it had a warrant beforehand."
He said about 25 per cent of the vehicles impounded were not returned to the owner for a number of reasons.
"Often the owner won't return for it because it is not worth the money that it will cost them to recover it. If we knew who the driver was we would sometimes seek permission with the courts to get rid of the car, but it is very rare that we do that."
He said there was not always prosecution, but they had a "good strike rate".
"If they are licensed and decide to risk it in this way, a disqualification is highly likely and a quite significant fine as well."
He said the police needed help from the public to hold dangerous drivers to account.
"We are not all seeing and all knowing, we need the public's help to identify where these locations are, what's going on and particularly who is behaving in that way so we can hold them to account."
