Richard Chambers vividly remembers a phone call on a Sunday afternoon that changed his career.
At the time, Chambers was in charge of the Balmoral station in Auckland and was struggling with a tricky internal investigation of his own staff.
Undertaking such an inquiry can be lonely, and the pressure was taking its toll on the young officer.
Then he answered an unexpected phone call at home. It was Gavin Jones, the district commander of Auckland, who simply wanted to check on Chambers.
“I was a senior sergeant, he was the superintendent. I could not believe he took the time to ring me on a Sunday afternoon to see how I was getting on,” Chambers told the Herald.
“That one phone call taught me a lot about leadership, and how staying connected to the frontline is really, really important … for our staff to be supported by their bosses.”
The lesson clearly stuck. Chambers is renowned for getting out of Wellington to visit stations across the country, or sending a message of congratulations or support to officers depending on their circumstances.
Unsurprisingly, the announcement of Chambers as the new Police Commissioner this week has been welcomed by the frontline as the most popular appointment since Peter Marshall in 2010.
And while the nature of the job means he will have to spend more time in the capital, Chambers has no plans to become deskbound.
“You can manage from an office, but you can’t lead from an office,” Chambers said.
“I want to get to every district [New Zealand is divided into 12 police districts] before Christmas. That’s a big ask but I reckon I can do it.”
He wants other leaders in the organisation of 15,000 to follow suit.
“My expectation is everyone - the executive, district commanders, area commanders - are visible to the frontline. Our frontline staff are the heart and soul of policing. It’s a tough job and getting tougher, so we need to look after our people.”
Now 52, married with two daughters, Chambers was born and raised in Auckland. After finishing his secondary education at Auckland Grammar School, he took a year off to travel, then returned to study a business degree.
He thought about training as an accountant or perhaps in law, which would have been a natural career choice given his father, Roger Chambers, was a prominent defence barrister.
But he could not shake the thought of joining the police. Through his father’s work in the criminal justice system, the younger Chambers had been introduced to senior police officers whose stories enthralled him.
It had always seemed like an exciting career, but in weighing up his options, Chambers arranged a “ride-along” in a police car and was paired with a young female constable.
“At the end of the shift, I thought ‘wow, she’s an awesome policewoman and I want to be like her’,” Chambers said.
The young constable was Jill Rogers who, like Chambers, has gone on to rise through the ranks to be an assistant commissioner.
“I saw the way Jill interacted with people from all sorts of backgrounds. She was really inspiring to me, and was a big influence on my decision to join the police,” Chambers said. “We’re really lucky to have her.”
He started at the Avondale station in January 1996, and within a week the 23-year-old had a new nickname.
An unfortunate car accident meant a cat had to be euthanised in unorthodox fashion, so everyone started calling the rookie constable “Felix”.
The sobriquet stuck. But Chambers soon caught the attention of veteran colleagues for all the right reasons.
“He was keen. Enthusiastic. Bright. He was bloody good,” said Bruce Good, the senior detective in charge at the Avondale station at the time.
It was Good who encouraged Chambers to qualify as a detective and acted as a mentor in his early years. Although they didn’t work together in the same station for long, Good remembers Chambers as one to watch.
“He was always destined to go higher,” said Good, now retired after an impressive career as the detective inspector in charge of Auckland’s drug squads.
“At that stage, you don’t know how high they can go. But I’m not surprised [that Chambers is now the Police Commissioner].”
After joining the CIB, Chambers moved through the frontline ranks in Auckland and Wellington as a sergeant, detective sergeant and senior sergeant.
In 2005, he shifted into police national headquarters as the inspector in charge of developing strategy and policy with Howard Broad, the Police Commissioner of the day.
“When Howard asked me to work for him, I thought ‘Who on earth am I? Strategy and policy, it’s not who I am’,” Chambers told the Herald.
“But he believed in me, gave me opportunities, and taught me a lot. I’m very grateful to have had these kinds of people in my policing career who have had a profound impact on how I operate.”
Two years later, he was appointed area commander for Lower Hutt, followed by stints as the district commander for Tasman then in his hometown of Auckland. In 2016, Chambers was promoted to be an assistant commissioner and shifted back to Wellington.
He held several portfolios in that time including oversight of serious and organised crime investigations (2016-2020), as well as the police districts in the upper half of the North Island (2020-2024).
During that time, Chambers took a lead role marshalling the troops during the Covid-19 pandemic, and was later put in charge of the operation to remove the vaccine mandate protesters occupying the Parliament precinct in early 2022.
The stand-off ended with a mass eviction on March 22, 2022, which descended into a remarkable scene in New Zealand: a riot with police officers being attacked with makeshift weapons like cobblestones, and returning fire with sponge rounds, while protesters set fire to the grounds.
“It was really, really tough,” Chambers said. “The whole issue around Covid mandates had divided the country. New Zealand Police reflects the community so within our own ranks we had different views on what we should and shouldn’t do,” Chambers said.
“But as police officers, we’ve got a job to do. Everyone put aside their personal views and got on with the job. I was so proud of everyone.”
In the fortnight leading up to that watershed moment, Chambers would leave the confines of Police National Headquarters and head down Molesworth St to walk around the occupied grounds of Parliament each day.
He spoke with staff to canvas their thoughts, but also to get a visceral sense of what it felt like on the ground.
“No doubt it was a tense environment. We hadn’t seen this kind of division since the Springbok Tour in 1981,” Chambers said.
“But the vast majority of the people at the protest were there for the right reasons. They were good people, it was only a small few that came with a different purpose in mind.
“That was a hard time but at the end of my career … those few weeks will be ones that I look back on.”
On Monday, Chambers will walk into Police National Headquarters for the first day of his five-year term as Police Commissioner. He’s just as excited as when he started at the Avondale station in 1996, but also aware of the challenges facing the organisation.
Money is tight, morale is low, and the Government has set ambitious recruitment goals.
Chambers has indicated a “back-to-basics” approach, and that will mean making some hard decisions about what to prioritise.
“We can’t do everything. And not everything will be popular,” he said, hinting at changes to come.
“But I’ve got to decide what is going to make the greatest impact on public safety, and the safety of my staff.”
But it’s not all bad in New Zealand, Chambers says. He has spent most of 2024 based in France in a senior role at Interpol, the global network of police forces, in charge of organised and emerging crime threats.
As well as giving him a front-row seat to international crime trends (and a phone packed with contact details of law enforcement bosses to request a favour) the experience has provided some important context.
“We often beat ourselves up and talk about how things can be better in New Zealand. But [working overseas] also taught me how lucky we are,” Chambers says.
“We have some challenges but there are countries around the world with even bigger challenges. So it puts into perspective how awesome we are as a country.”
As our conversation draws to an end, Chambers reflects again on how his father’s vocation in law influenced his own career path, and the importance of clear communication in police leadership.
As a defence lawyer, Rogers Chambers was known as someone who could connect with anyone - a judge, the jury, fellow lawyers, detectives and his clients (innocent or not).
“I’m talking about some pretty hardcore criminals too,” Richard Chambers says. “That taught me [the importance of having the ability] to talk to anyone because they’ve all got stories.
“When talking about leadership, there are two things that are most important in policing. Number one, retain commonsense in everything we do. Secondly, we need to be outstanding communicators.
“If we do those two things well, we’re setting ourselves up to be the best we can be.”
He made a confident start in his media interviews this week but as our conversation draws to a close, Chambers accepts the honeymoon period won’t last long. It’s the nature of policing that something controversial will happen, and he will cop flak as the face of the police.
Now he’s got the top job, he’s determined to keep living by the lesson Gavin Jones taught him.
“When bosses are working hard to stay connected to the frontline, it makes a difference. I won’t lose sight of that during my tenure,” Chambers says.
“And I don’t want to lose sight of why I joined in 1996. I didn’t start out wanting to be the Commissioner. I just wanted to be a good policeman.”
Jared Savage covers crime and justice issues, with a particular interest in organised crime. He joined the Herald in 2006 and has won a dozen journalism awards in that time, including twice being named Reporter of the Year. He is also the author of Gangland and Gangster’s Paradise.
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