Mike Blowers: Disgraced cop's 'fall from grace'

Michael Blowers in the Whangarei High Court. Photo / Michael Cunningham

A former senior police officer who admitted to supplying drugs has suffered the humiliation of a significant "fall from grace", a judge has found.

Today, former Detective Sergeant Michael Blowers, 51, was sentenced to almost five years in prison.

Blowers pleaded guilty in October to supplying methamphetamine, and stealing methamphetamine from a police exhibit room, between 2011 and 2012.

Blowers originally denied all charges, but changed his plea to guilty two days into a jury trial, which had been set down for two weeks.

In the High Court at Whangarei this morning, Blowers was sentenced to four years and nine months for supplying meth and two years and three months for theft of drugs, to be served concurrently.

He was discharged on charge of supplying cannabis.

The veteran officer had 20 years' experience on the job, with particular expertise in battling the drug trade.

He was the officer in charge of the Northland Organised Crime Unit which carried out raids against drug manufacturers and suppliers.

He resigned two weeks before his arrest in April last year.

At his sentencing today Justice Geoffrey Venning said Blowers explained his offending by saying he had taken the drugs to protect his family from perceived gang threats.

He said Blowers' explanation did him no credit.

"You were a senior police officer. You know and would have been well aware of the resources available to the police. You and your family could have been protected.

"The irresistible inference is that the real reason you took the drugs was because of your relationship with the informant and in order to make money.

"If you and your family had genuinely been threatened by gangs there were steps the police could and would have taken to protect you and, importantly, your family and you know that."

However, he said Blowers was "remorseful" and had acknowledged his actions had humiliated his family by placing them in an emotional and financially strained situation.

"You have lost the home you had built up with your wife and you have suffered the very public humiliation of a significant personal fall from grace."