A North Shore police officer has been caught on tape making lewd sexual remarks about a female colleague who subsequently quit her job.
The officer made the comment to another police officer during a conversation that was being recorded.
It is understood the officer gave the recorder to
a young civilian staff member to transcribe, not realising his explicit remarks were still on there.
The woman transcribed the tape before finding the observations - some of which related to her - at the end of the conversation.
She reported the matter to her supervisor and has since resigned from her job.
When contacted by the Herald last night, the woman said she did not wish to talk about the incident.
The officer who made the comments is believed to be on annual leave. Waitemata road policing manager Superintendent John Kelly would not confirm the incident but said if something like that had happened it would be treated as an employment matter, which police would not comment on.
Any such allegations would be handled according to the department's sexual harassment policy, which had a range of disciplinary outcomes.
"We have moved on a lot in our culture in the last 20 years and we would not find an incident of conduct like that acceptable in any way, shape or form these days," Mr Kelly said.
A spokeswoman for Police Minister Annette King said the Minister would not comment on employment matters.
The National Party's police spokesman Chester Borrows said the North Shore officer's comments were an "unfortunate incident" given the recent sex trials and attempts by police to separate themselves from the perceived culture within the police during the 1980s.
However, he added there were always going to be "one or two" people who let the police down and he hoped it would not reflect on the whole organisation.
"You can't cater for every idiot and quite honestly, things like that get said from time to time, probably in all areas of employment," he said.
"Any supervisor would be incredibly disappointed to know their staff had spoken that way. It doesn't reflect on the organisation, it reflects on the stupid person who made the comments."
