Inspector Dane Clifford, MNZM. Photo / Paul Taylor
Inspector Dane Clifford, MNZM. Photo / Paul Taylor
Two former freezing works meat inspectors who became long-serving Hawke's Bay police inspectors have been recognised in the Queen's Birthday and Platinum Jubilee Honours.
Police Eastern District prevention manager Inspector Dean Clifford and district organised crime team leader Detective Inspector David De Lange, both based at district headquarters in Hastings, have become Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for services to the New Zealand Police and the community.
Clifford was among the many meat workers forced into new career choices after the closure of the Whakatu Freezing Works.
He joined the police in June 1987, while De Lange had made his choice while working at Takapau two years earlier.
He was already known as a near two-metre-tall lock who was to play 40 matches for the Hawke's Bay Magpies from 1982 to 1987.
Each has been recently recognised for 35 years' service in the police, and each has served in Hastings and Napier, as well as terms in the Flaxmere Community Policing Centre.
Both served through the 1992 police and Ministry of Transport traffic department merger and the nationwide restructuring, which included merging of the Napier and Hastings police districts and the later Hawke's Bay-Gisborne merger.
Detective Inspector David De Lange, MNZM. Photo / Supplied
Clifford was appointed Sergeant in 1994, Senior Sergeant in 1996 and Inspector in 2000, and was Hastings area manager from 2004 to 2012, before being deployed for a short time to East Timor in 2013 to mentor implementation of a community policing model.
He has been known for building relationships between police, communities and agencies, including in the areas of youth, family harm and mental health, and was district policing development manager, with a focus on new approaches to issues of domestic violence.
More recently he has been district prevention manager, also leading the area's police pandemic response, and last year he was acting director of the Royal New Zealand Police College near Porirua.
David De Lange was a uniformed officer for about a decade before joining the CIB, and having been appointed Detective Senior Sergeant in charge of the Hastings CIB in 2006 has overseen investigations of some of Hawke's Bay's major crimes, particularly in Hastings and including homicides, and serious assaults and sexual offending.
He had four years as leader of the Eastern Police District child protection team and is currently head of the district's organised crime team.
But it's been a career of much more than helping to uphold the law and playing rugby for the Magpies, police teams, and New Zealand Combined services – and Waipukurau HSOB and Hastings Celtic, names which have passed into history.
He's also had 22 years in school board governance, including being chair of the Mayfair Primary board from 1998 to 2003 and a member of the Karamu High School Board from 2004 to 2020, including another 12 years in the Chair.
