Veteran Bay detective calls time on career

In the dark depths of the nightclub, Mel Ridley remembers flashing his police torch in the 16-year-old's eyes and seeing his pupils respond.
The only visible injury on the kid's angry face, a foot away from his, was a thin trickle of blood on his lip.
By all accounts, the kid looked fine, spitting at Ridley "in four-letter words" to get out.
The next day The Truth newspaper would scream "Police Left My Son to Die".
Ridley was 20. A new cop in Wellington in 1975. And he was about to be accused by the New Zealand Police of failing to investigate.
"We went to this night club," Ridley remembers. "It was a well-known criminal haunt and no one gave us any information.
"There was a young teenager who had a cut lip and no other injuries. He gave us our pedigree when we arrived. We got no co-operation from anyone, so we left.
"At the time, he was talking quite well and seemed perfectly okay."
What Ridley didn't know was the kid had been kicked in the head and had swelling on the brain.
During the night, he deteriorated and ended up in hospital. He died on the operating table but was resuscitated.
When The Truth hit the stands, police went into damage control. Ridley, who despite his inexperience had been the senior officer dealing with the incident, faced an internal police charge.
"Which I found particularly harsh. We did a very good job in trying to elicit information from drunken, anti-social gang members and put our own safety in danger in trying to find out what had [happened]."
Ridley, who'd been in the police force 18 months, challenged his superiors by engaging a defence lawyer. "And they weren't happy about that. They wanted to keep it in-house but, at the same time, my job was on the line."
Did it hurt his career? Ridley says no.
"I think they realised I'd stand up for myself," he says. "It was a good learning curve - to be aware of how things can suddenly go awry. To dot your i's and cross your t's."
Defence lawyer Mike Bungay cost Ridley $120 and a bottle of whisky. At the time, Bungay was also defending economist Bill Sutch, who was accused of trying to pass government information to the Soviet Union. Sutch was acquitted.
Both cases were in the news at the same time and Ridley jokes: "I always said my case made him famous."
At the police tribunal hearing, the facts came out as he knew they would.
"I was acquitted but it's something you don't forget I guess. And something that can still happen and does still happen."
The experience had a lasting impact on Ridley. As his career and experience grew, he felt it his duty to help young policemen and women in difficulty.
"Policing isn't a perfect science and a lot of policemen, older ones, wiser heads, helped me out. I guess it's a duty you have to the younger police."
Ridley, a Tauranga detective sergeant, has just retired after 39 years with the police. He has been part of the New Zealand Police Association since the early 1990s and director for Waikato and Bay of Plenty since 2003.
It's a role that gives him the freedom to speak out when other officers are stifled by a code, which says they can not.
But Ridley, 56, is diplomatic about having that free speech. He pauses generously as he answers questions, allowing his mind to tick over the right answer.
Policing, he says, has given him a marvellous career and he's not one to intentionally rock the boat.
But while speaking out is not always easy, sometimes it's necessary. One thing that needs to be aired, he believes, is the police's failure to address the methamphetamine problem early on.
Ridley claims police management failed to act on advice given to them in the early 1990s by overseas police officers that P would take over unless addressed immediately - and now New Zealand is paying the price.
"I'd like to think they learn from their mistakes but organised crime will now forever be a problem in New Zealand. We have joined the rest of the world, partly because of that ..."
As we sit at a Tauranga cafe, just days out from his retirement, the smartly dressed policeman is sipping a latte and looks more like an office worker than a man who investigates murders and drug busts.
It turns out to be an ironic observation. "I'm now office bound and a lot of frontline police officers are too," Ridley says.
"For every 10 minutes they spend on the street, they might spend an hour filling out forms, which doesn't help them to do their job. There's an unacceptable amount of police time wasted on needless form filling and paper work. New forms are created by the week it seems by bureaucrats and management and it might help them but it doesn't help frontline police.
"There must be tonnes of paper that goes out from the police station annually. Prosecution files we prepare for court, you just about need a truck to carry them over there now. Some of them are ridiculously large and ever so time consuming."
Ridley sounds almost bitter but feels he is merely commenting on how the force has changed in four decades.
Born and bred in Wellington, he moved to Tauranga in 1989. When he walked the beat in the 1970s in Wellington, he carried no more than a notebook, handcuffs and a baton. Today, he thinks it's only a matter of time before officers carry guns.
"Not that many years ago, a lot of policemen, including myself, openly said 'if that day ever comes we're leaving. We don't want to be involved in carrying firearms' but we're now doing it more routinely anyway and it's just a matter of when the police hierarchy agrees with the majority of the public, and the police association, that full arming of the police is necessary."
The officers themselves are ready to be armed. "It's just a daily process for them now to put on their stab-resistant vests ... they've come to accept it as a necessary tool of their trade."
Ridley has never had to fire at someone and pities those that ever have to. One thing he believes will never change for police is being judged by the public.
"I do have a view that some elements of the media, and some groups in our community, have caused us to become too inward looking. We spend a massive amount of police resources and time investigating officers for the most minor of complaints.
"The thing with policing, the vast majority of events that you go to, someone is going to be upset with you.
"What isn't understood is a lot of complaints that are made about police behaviour arise from those incidents ... people make false and malicious complaints for the specific purpose of us to look away from the real crime and to look at our own police officers."
Like police pursuits?
Ridley frowns at my turn of phrase. He prefers calling them "fleeing drivers".
"Anything with police in it sells well. If it's police and sex, it sells doubly well.
"There's a lot of misinformation out there and it's very dangerous. What to the public want us to do? Police are responding to criminals who are endangering the public with reckless driving ..."
And if a fleeing driver crashes, it is not the police's fault.
Ridley has spent a lifetime helping others - often in the worst circumstances. In major criminal inquiries, CIB investigators are involved early and those detectives are often the ones who deliver the news a loved one is dead.
I want to know how you deliver the news someone has died. I can't imagine anything worse. "You just have to be as sympathetic, and diplomatic is not really the right word, but you just break it to them gently," he says.
I can see Ridley would. His voice is lower and I imagine he is remembering just such a time.
"They're not expecting anything. Then they just get hit between the eyes with something that destroys their life. That is a difficult part of your job - ruining people's lives for a short period of time. They all leave a little mark on you I guess."
Although he has left the force, one unsolved case is still on his mind. He refuses to say what but it's a Western Bay cold case that he believes is solvable.
I think of news stories we've covered and throw out a couple of names.
Ridley leans back in his chair, then sits forward but still won't tell me.
"I'm hoping the people I want to pass it on to will bring it to its conclusion. It's a bit difficult to talk about specifically. Those files are never totally filed away, not like that amazing American TV programme where they solve 70-year-old homicides in the space of 60 minutes, including commercials.
"There's a probability it will be solved. It's one case I've been holding on to for some years and it's solvable, it really is."
I'm curious. But Ridley, as lovely and accommodating as he is in this interview, won't budge.
"It would be unfair on the family," he says.
He leans back in his chair. The subject is changed.
Thinking back to his youth, Ridley thought about being a professional hunter or a military man when he left school.
Ironically, he didn't want to be stuck in an office and he is leaving the force because it's "my time".
"There's no one reason but I always anticipated about this time I would leave."
Now Ridley, a father of three, plans on doing some short-term contract work.
"I'm not totally out to pasture I guess."
Travelling, tramping - he wants to master the Milford Track - and spending time with the family are priorities.
When I call Ridley on his cellphone a couple of days later - he misses the call. It's his first day of retirement.
In mere moments, he calls back, apologetic. He was mowing the lawn.
Ridley is, and always will be, a professional. I tell him I need some more personal information about himself. He's not that keen.
"I don't actually like publicity for myself," he says, realising he could be giving too much away.
But he does tell me he's going to miss his Tauranga mates in the force.
Someone to vouch for Ridley's good work is Brian Brown, whose daughter Natasha Hayden, was strangled to death by Michael Curran at McLaren Falls in January 2005.
Brown says Ridley and Tauranga Sergeant Rob Lemoto made an extremely traumatic experience easier to handle.
"Mel and Rob made themselves available to myself and family to answer many questions that one has at a time grief and anger were at its zenith. Mel was always the consummate professional."
Former Western Bay of Plenty area commander Inspector Murray Lewis says it takes a special person to "walk that fine line" representing officers and still maintaining good relationships with police administration.
"Mel is a confident investigator. He's not excitable. He's well respected by staff and supervisors alike."
Fellow workmate Detective Sergeant Pete Blackwell says there's not a lot of Ridley's "vintage" around now in the police.
"It's experience you don't buy; you don't swat for exams. It comes from hands-on, front-line experience ... he'll be a hard one to replace."
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