More than a year after a man's yacht disappeared off the Northland coast, it has still not been found. The vessel was not lost in a storm or abandoned in an emergency of its own making. It was left adrift by police, who had just arrested its owner after he called them for help.
The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) examined the case and, on Thursday, found that officers should have done more both to limit the harm caused to the yacht's owner and to improve the chances of the vessel being recovered.
The sequence of events began off the Far North coast on the afternoon of 2 December 2024. The yacht's owner, referred to in the IPCA's findings as Mr X, made a mayday call claiming his crewmate, Mr Y, had stabbed him. Police located the 16-metre vessel roughly 10 nautical miles, or about 18.5 kilometres, offshore, arriving shortly before 8.30pm. Both men were arrested on existing warrants and placed in handcuffs. The IPCA considered those arrests reasonable, given that Mr Y faced a serious accusation and Mr X was, in the authority's words, "exhibiting unusual behaviour", possibly because of "drugs or under the influence of some substance". The two men were then taken ashore, and the yacht was left adrift.
The boat was far more than a recreational vessel to Mr X. It was his home, and it contained all of his possessions. More than a year later, despite a search conducted in the days that followed, the yacht has never been found.
Mr X brought a complaint to the IPCA raising several concerns about how police had handled the situation. One was that he had no opportunity to retrieve any of his belongings before being removed from the boat. Another was that neither he nor Mr Y had been given lifejackets for the trip back to shore. On the question of lifejackets, police argued that removing the men's handcuffs to fit them created too much risk. The IPCA did not accept that reasoning.
On the matter of Mr X's possessions, the authority's ruling acknowledged that "the circumstances were hazardous and reboarding the yacht may not have been without risk", noting the vessel was in poor condition. Even so, it concluded that "more consideration should have been given to allowing Mr X to retrieve some of his property".
The failures did not end there. Despite both men spending time in custody at Whangārei Police Station, no investigation into the alleged stabbing was carried out during that period. The IPCA also found that police should have arranged mental health assessments for both men while they were detained, and that more effort should have been made to properly address Mr X's assault complaint against Mr Y.
Part of what went wrong came down to an organisational blind spot. The response had drawn on staff from different parts of the Northland Police District, with officers in Whangārei assuming their Far North colleagues would handle certain matters, while those in the Far North assumed the same about Whangārei. Key responsibilities fell through the gap between them.
In its report, the IPCA noted that police had subsequently held a debrief into the incident, conducted alongside Maritime NZ and Coastguard. "One of the issues identified was the absence of a clear policy on how police respond to incidents of this nature, unusual as they are," the report stated. "A recommendation from the debrief was that police develop a policy to support police responders in maritime operations. We fully support that recommendation."
The yacht, 16 metres long and everything Mr X owned, remains unaccounted for.
