Police estimated about 1500 protesters converged on Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Police estimated about 1500 protesters converged on Parliament. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Five hundred police were brought in and put on call in preparation for Tuesday's anti-Government protest, new figures show.
Thousands of protesters gathered at Parliament grounds earlier this week for The Freedom and Rights Coalition protest led by Destiny Church's Brian Tamaki.
The event had the capital on tenterhooks, with concerns it could morph into an unlawful occupation similar to what happened in February.
The earlier protest began as an anti-mandate march and turned into a 23-day occupation, which came to a fiery end as police clashed with violent rioters.
Figures released to NZME show police were well stocked with reinforcement should this week's protest take a similar turn, with 500 police staff being brought in and kept on call, including officers both inside and out of the Wellington region.
Police Association president Chris Cahill said it was a significant number.
"It's frustrating that this group for their own selfish ends caused the disruption to normal policing across multiple police districts, which really was unnecessary and really achieved absolutely nothing."
But the large number of on-call cops was appropriate given the risk the protest posed, he said.
"Police clearly had to make sure they were prepared if things escalated. They suffered significant criticism not acting quick enough in the protests back in March ... so it was important they did have the staff available to shut this down quickly if it grew or got violent."
Preparations included blocking off roads around Parliament and enforcing parking restrictions.
Cahill said it was likely such protests would continue to cause large disruption to police until they could be certain there would not be a repeat of the behaviour seen during the 23-day Parliament occupation.
"When there's the risk that we are seeing at the moment that police have to counter it's going to cause large disruption."
Such protests were already impacting police capacity, he said.
"Recently we saw that smash and grab in Queen St in Auckland in the middle of an afternoon, where were police that day? They were at the Domain policing another one of these protests."
Former police crisis negotiator Lance Burdett said the numbers of police at Tuesday's protest wasn't overkill.
"You can only base policing on the past and of course last time it was quite a big protest, you just never know on the day who's going to turn up," he said.
"So, if they didn't have enough staff and it escalated then they would've been criticised for that."
Pulling police from other districts did have a flow-on effect, he said.
"It's almost like a waste of resources but you have to do it ... but certainly they're going to have to go back to their districts and pick up where they left off."
He thought there would have been more than 500 staff, but supported the number of officers there.
"They've obviously done a bit of work in the background and with social media and I think they've come up with the right number."
It was not only police that the protests were impacting, he said.
"It's also the public that are being hugely inconvenienced by this and putting public at risk.
"The irony for me is that the protest marches recently have been called the freedom of movement when in fact they are restricting most of the population of New Zealand's free movement."
He said the more of these protests that happened the more intelligence police were gathering and the better they could deal with these events.
Things became tense when protesters and counter-protesters passed each other. Photo / George Heard
National's police spokesman Mark Mitchell supported the actions police took on Tuesday.
"It is a big draw on resources there's no doubt about that. However, it is an operational decision for the police and they have to plan for every different scenario.
"We saw what happened with the last protest so I think it's important they did have the numbers available and the ability to respond quickly to any event that may have unfolded."
Police Minister Chris Hipkins said how police use their resources is properly a matter for them.
"They had no way of knowing for sure how the protest would unfold. As has been widely acknowledged, they did a great job."
