{"id":15641,"date":"2025-11-12T05:52:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:52:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=15641"},"modified":"2025-11-12T05:52:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:52:30","slug":"inside-a-cover-up-the-top-cops-the-quasi-investigation-and-the-officers-who-stood-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=15641","title":{"rendered":"Inside a &#8216;cover-up&#8217;: The top cops, the &#8216;quasi investigation&#8217; and the officers who stood up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>A damning report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority found serious misconduct at the highest levels of police over how they handled accusations of sexual offending by former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming. National Crime Correspondent Sam Sherwood reports.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Inside a scathing 135-page report into how police responded to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/578545\/police-failed-woman-who-accused-jevon-mcskimming-of-sexual-offending-her-lawyer-says\">accusations of sexual offending by former Deputy Commissioner<\/a>\u00a0Jevon McSkimming lies a quote from one of the country&#8217;s most senior adult sexual assault investigators.<\/p>\n<p>The officer, named in the report as Officer D, told the Independent Police Conduct Authority that the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/578549\/watch-live-government-installs-inspector-general-of-police-after-mcskimming-report\">handling of the allegations<\/a>\u00a0prior to her involvement in the case was &#8220;appalling&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/578534\/former-top-cop-andrew-coster-criticised-in-ipca-report-on-mcskimming-case\">just not followed policy whatsoever<\/a>\u00a0and it doesn&#8217;t take a rocket scientist\u2026 Jevon has tried to get rid of this by making a complaint and \u2026 making [Ms Z] the villain, when in actual fact what he perhaps should have done was gone: &#8216;Can someone look at this and investigate it and get it cleared up? Because I&#8217;ve got designs on the future, and I want my integrity intact, so I welcome an investigation. Let&#8217;s get it cleared up, get it out of the way&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But you know what&#8217;s the worst thing &#8211; if you make a mistake \u2026 the only worse thing that you can do is then cover it up\u2026You can paint all sorts of nice words of this \u2026but to an outsider looking in, and \u2026 I mean even me, this looks like a cover-up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The woman referred to in the report as Ms Z was charged in May last year with causing harm by posting digital communication in relation to more than 300 emails she allegedly sent to McSkimming&#8217;s work email address between December 2023 and April 2024. The emails included abusive and derogatory language directed towards McSkimming and other people.<\/p>\n<p>With the release of the report, RNZ takes a look at how police investigated the woman&#8217;s complaints and how in the words of Police Commissioner Richard Chambers she was\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/national\/578550\/inexcusable-conduct-police-commissioner-says-lack-of-leadership-over-mcskimming\">&#8220;ignored and badly let down&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A damning report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority found serious misconduct at the highest levels of police over how they handled accusations of sexual offending by former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming. National Crime Correspondent Sam Sherwood reports. Inside a scathing 135-page report into how police responded to\u00a0accusations of sexual offending by former Deputy Commissioner\u00a0Jevon [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15641"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15643,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15641\/revisions\/15643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}