Inquiry finds police missed credible 2023 Phillips sighting
A public inquiry has found police inaction after a sighting of Tom Phillips and his children on 28 May 2023 led to delays that could have been avoided, and officers should have treated the report as credible.
The sighting began near Te Anga Road. A woman said a man she believed was Phillips asked for help to jump-start his car. She drove him to his vehicle. During that time she took a photo of him and saw his children.
She then called police to report a man and children stuck on a forestry road, and said she suspected the man was Phillips. That call is now central to the inquiry's view of the police response RNZ.
A unit was sent about half an hour after the call. It did not attend. It was diverted to a family harm incident, the police term for domestic violence, at a different address on Te Anga Road.
There is no evidence the first unit visited the woman's home or the sighting location. The job was logged as needing no further action, which means it was closed.
The inquiry said that should not have stood. Police should have recognised the sighting as credible. Had there been no delay, the inquiry found, there might have been a real prospect of finding the children.
That sits in a longer timeline. Phillips left with his children in December 2021 and police sought him from then on. Between 2021 and 8 September 2025 there were limited sightings, and police did not know where they were living, according to the Independent Police Conduct Authority's August 2026 report on the later shooting IPCA report.
Police have said they believe people in the local area helped Phillips Reuters.
Police were called to reports of a burglary in the early hours of 8 September 2025 before the fatal shootout with Phillips RNZ. During that encounter Phillips shot and seriously wounded an officer. Phillips was then killed by police after a robbery, and the children were found at a makeshift campsite hours later AP News.
The Independent Police Conduct Authority found the shooting of Phillips was justified. The Government set up a Public Inquiry into the Disappearance of the Phillips Children to examine the wider handling of the case Department of Internal Affairs.
The broader context here is about triage and accountability, not just one dispatch choice. Triage, like in an emergency department, means deciding which call to answer first. The questions are how a call that named Phillips, offered a photo and reported children present could be ranked in a way that allowed diversion and a no-further-action close, what back-up rule should apply when a high-risk missing-persons case meets other urgent demand such as family harm, and what record should be kept when the first unit does not attend.
The political question now for ministers and Police leadership is to show what has changed in communications centres practice since May 2023, and to assure Parliament that a similarly specific report would be handled differently. The inquiry's words are narrow. Avoidable delays. A credible sighting. A real prospect. It does not say the children would have been found. It leaves that doubt in place, while the operational failure is not in dispute.
