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New Zealand Police face a crisis of confidence
A string of scandals – including ranks from the top brass to officers on the beat – is putting New Zealand Police under the spotlight.
And for an organisation built on public trust, it is proving a bruising experience.
The recent era of police scandal started with Jevon McSkimming, the country’s second most senior officer, who quit in disgrace and pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual exploitation and bestiality material.
Since then, other officers have been charged with similar allegations; claims of falsified breath tests have emerged; a senior police executive joined the opposition party; two ex-cops have appeared in court charged with perverting the course of justice; an officer gave his criminal son police-only access in court, and now complaints have been made against the nation’s top cop.
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers is under investigation, with the complaints – which The Detail has been told relate to alleged conduct towards women – now being examined by both police and the Independent Police Conduct Authority.
While Chambers strongly rejects the allegations, the questions they are raising go well beyond just him.
On today’s episode, The Detail looks at those questions, including whether New Zealand Police can rebuild trust, starting with RNZ’s award-winning crime correspondent Sam Sherwood, who has been covering the stories every step of the way.
“I went to the commissioner’s office as well as the Police Minister Mark Mitchell’s office a couple of weeks ago after hearing that concerns had been raised about the commissioner,” says Sherwood, who finally got complaint confirmation last Thursday.
“What we understand is that one complaint comes from a former police staffer who raised allegations about the commissioner’s conduct towards women … and it’s understood that the other complaint is from a woman Mr Chambers dated more than two decades ago.”
He says Chambers remains in the top job, telling staff there was no need for him to take leave.
The Public Service Commissioner has also indicated there is no requirement for Chambers to step aside while investigations continue.
Still, questions remain.
The police minister received the complaints months ago – one in November, another in February – but the public only learnt about them last week.
“At this stage we simply don’t know why it took from November until now for this to come to light,” Sherwood says.
That timing is particularly uncomfortable because Chambers arrived promising exactly what many believed police desperately needed: transparency, accountability and tougher standards.
Ironically, Sherwood says Chambers has been driving many of the changes that are now exposing misconduct.
Following McSkimming’s resignation, he ordered a rapid review of police information security.
That review ultimately resulted in three police staff being charged with possessing objectionable publications – two appeared in court in Auckland last week.
He also overhauled the executive leadership team, strengthened the National Integrity Unit and began revising the police’s code of conduct following a damning IPCA report into police culture.
More aggressive investigating
Former senior investigator and crisis negotiator Lance Burdett believes many of the scandals emerging now are the result of police investigating themselves more aggressively.
“My first reaction was, ‘Oh no, another one, another commissioner’,” he says of the allegations against Chambers.
“And then putting it into perspective, and looking at it from an investigator’s viewpoint, you can see how all of these have lined up to make us feel like there’s something wrong with police, and there’s not.”
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Instead, Burdett argues, they are evidence the accountability system is working.
“So, if we take a step right back to the last 12 months, we’ve had a series of events that have happened, that if you take each one individually, you think the system’s working. If you take them together, you think the system’s failing.
He rejects any suggestion the force is riddled with “bad cops”.
“Police don’t join to become bad people,” he says. “You spend your whole career under scrutiny – from the public, internally, and from oversight agencies. That’s exactly how it should be.”
That scrutiny has rarely been more intense, but for Burdett, timing matters.
“Emotion moves faster than information,” he says. “When everything happens close together, it creates the perception something is fundamentally broken.”
He believes transparency, even when painful, is ultimately healthy – “Nothing good happens in the dark.”
The bigger challenge may now belong to the thousands of officers who have not done anything wrong.
“They’re the ones who turn up every day and wear the consequences,” says Burdett, who has worked through previous police scandals.
“You’d turn up to jobs and people would say, ‘Oh great, the rapists are here.’ That’s tough when you’re trying to do the right thing.”
Despite the damage of recent months, Burdett remains optimistic and believes the force is going through a difficult reset rather than an institutional collapse.
“They’re stretched. Morale is mixed. But this organisation will come out stronger.”
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The chief executive of the Parliamentary Service is confident there will be enough room to accommodate the increased number of MPs and their staff coming into Parliament.
On current numbers, up to 131 MPs could be sitting in the Chamber following the election, brought on by a record overhang result.
Clerk of the House of Representatives Dr David Wilson told the Spinoff that currently the debating chamber had enough chairs to seat 124 MPs – including the Speaker of the House – and work was being done to accommodate more by altering the seating arrangement.
In a statement, Parliamentary Service chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero said planning for a larger Parliament had been going for “some time”.
“Now that the election results have confirmed an increase to the number of members we are looking at several options.
“We are confident we will be able to accommodate all members within the Chamber.”
VNP / Phil Smith
Gonzalez-Montero said office accommodation for members and their staff would be “stretched” for a short time, but the new Members’ Building was only a few months away from “practical completion”.
That building – located behind Parliament – was due to be ready to occupy in April next year and had capacity to accommodate around 30 backbench MPs.
“All members should be in fit-for-purpose accommodation from that point,” Gonzalez-Montero said.
Following the 2023 election, 123 MPs sat in the Chamber – a record number at the time. That decreased to 122 following the resignation of National MP Judith Collins.
Collins held the seat of Papakura and stepped down in May and Parliament voted against holding a by-election because it was too close to the election.
The election result also meant high-ranking National Party MPs like Chris Bishop, Paul Goldsmith, Nicola Willis and Gerry Brownlee – Speaker of the House and an MP for 30 years – would likely not make it back into Parliament.
Only resigning or retiring MPs were permitted to give a valedictory speech meaning none of them would get the chance to give a valedictory statement.
Asked if their would be special allowances for valedictories, Wilson said in a statement that normally only MPs were allowed to speak in the House but the House could suspend its own rules or temporarily alter them.
“It could do so to allow former members to address the House.”
Wilson said no such arrangements could be made until the next Parliament opened and members sworn in.
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