Drivers failing to stop and attempting to flee from ACT police increased by 38 per cent in the first four months of this year.
As most Canberra drivers were staying at home and driving less, police are perplexed as to the reason for the anomaly when other types of crime, such as household burglary, have decreased.
The number of drivers failing to stop for police during the first four months of the year rose from 183 in 2019 to 254 in 2020.
Failing to stop is usually associated with other types of criminal behaviour, such as property crime, breach of bail, licence disqualification or driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle. It often involves repeat offenders.
Police said that when "peaks" occur, this is usually "the result of a small number of offenders being responsible for numerous fail-to-stop incidents".
Police powers introduced four years ago allow police to enter a property without permission and impound a vehicle which has been involved in a fail-to-stop incident.
Detective Sergeant Marcus Boorman, who is in charge of ACT traffic operations, said this power had been exercised on "numerous occasions this year".
"Police will continue to put people before the courts for these matters," he said.
"Removing these drivers from Canberra's roads can only make things safer for everyone."
Failing to stop was introduced as a specific offence when the ACT introduced a new pursuit policy in 2016.
Under the policy, a police officer can only initiate or continue a pursuit after radio consultation with the Duty Operations Sergeant and in the belief that the overall harm the pursuit would prevent is greater than the risks involved in chasing the offender.
Changes to the pursuit policy also came with higher financial penalties for offenders and the potential for their imprisonment.
Before the spike recorded in the first quarter of this year, incidents where Canberra road users had failed for police to stop were in slow decline year on year.
There were 837 incidents recorded in 2017, 786 in 2018 and 770 in 2019.
Momentum for a change to the long-standing ACT police pursuit policy came after a 2005 incident in which Canberra teenager Clea Rose was struck and killed by a stolen car in Civic.
Although an investigation found the police pursuit of the stolen car, which was being driven by a 14-year-old boy, had not contributed to the incident, the debate resurfaced a year later when 21-year-old Amber Westin ran a red light during a police chase and struck a car in which grandmother Heather Freeman was a passenger. Mrs Freeman died in that incident.
Then in 2010 four people died, including a three-month-old baby, in a high speed crash on Canberra Avenue, Narrabundah in which the drunk driver of a stolen car sped through a red light and hit another vehicle. NSW Police had abandoned pursuit of the stolen car before the collision.
An extensive ACT police pursuits policy review was commissioned by former Chief Police Officer Rudi Lammers in 2014, and a policy change was introduced two years later.
Police believe that a proportion of the most recent spike is associated with an incident on Christmas Eve last year when 11 vehicles were stolen from a holding yard in Hume.
The offenders, several of them juveniles, evaded a security guard, forced a key safe and systematically stole a range of vehicles from the yard including a BMW X5, BMW 325i, Audi A7 SUV, two Ford Ranger utilities and two Toyota FT86 sports cars.
The offenders then used the stolen vehicles to embark on a range of burglaries and thefts throughout the territory over a three-week period.
