The police watchdog is reopening its inquiry into the 2016 police shooting of Rotorua man Shargin Stephens.
Police shot Shargin Stephens in 2016 Photo: Screengrab / TVNZ / Te Karere
The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) said today it would undertake an "in-depth review" of the case after RNZ last week revealed significant discrepancies in the official story of the police shooting.
Stephens was shot and killed in July 2016 after smashing up an empty police car with a weed slasher.
The IPCA's original report said the shooting was justified but the police's own homicide investigation contradicted many of the authority's findings.
Stephens, a 35-year-old Māori man, was on electronically monitored bail when he was shot.
Despite this, police bail checked him 64 times in the five weeks leading up to the shooting, sometimes three or even four times a day.
Fifteen of these times officers went to his house between 11pm and 6am, including visits at 1.45am, 2.15am and 3.49am.
The original IPCA report said the police bail checks were "reasonable" and did not play a role in Stephens lashing out that day. But the IPCA made that finding based on factors which are contradicted by the police investigation.
Police told the IPCA the bail checks never woke Stephens but officers interviewed by detectives in the homicide inquiry said they woke him up multiple times.
One police officer said he woke Stephens up on six separate bail checks.
The IPCA report says that given he had the electronic bracelet on, the primary purpose of the bail checks was to check that Stephens was meeting his conditions not to consume drugs or alcohol.
But RNZ learned that Stephens was only breath tested on 21 of the 64 times he was bail checked - and that he passed every breath test.
The IPCA report also said the constant late night bail checks were justified because Stephens was uncooperative.
But this was also contradicted by the sworn statements made by police officers who bail checked him. During the 64 bail checks there was not one report of Stephens being uncooperative.
The IPCA report is also at odds with the police investigation on whether the officers involved in the shooting knew who they were dealing with.
The IPCA report said, "The police officers who responded were unaware of Mr Stephens' identity until after the shooting."
But RNZ discovered that one of the officers told detectives he knew it was Stephens the minute he confronted him.
"I recognised him straight away," the officer said. "He is a well-known criminal and I have tracked him many times."
Today, IPCA principal operations adviser Warren Young told RNZ that after an initial review the authority had now decided to take "a more indepth review of our original investigation".
Young said that review would probably take until the end of October.
Last week, two days after RNZ's investigation into the shooting was published, a coroner banned the media from reporting evidence presented to the inquiry into Stephens' death.
Coroner J P Ryan's interim non-publication order, issued under section 74 of the Coroners Act, effectively prohibits media organisations from publishing new material about the case but does not apply to stories already published by RNZ.
Ryan has set out the reasons for his decision in a Coroner's minute.
RNZ has been provided with an extract of that minute but that document itself is subject to the non-publication order so RNZ can not tell readers and listeners what the coroner's reasons are.
