Police have disputed claims of child abuse and neglect following a series of videos filmed outside the Whakatāne Police Station and posted to Facebook last night.
In the first of three videos a man filmed children around a car parked outside the Whakatāne Station. The man said in the video: "these are the babies left in the car".
He asked the children how long they had been left in the car, one replying three hours and the second two hours.
The man went on to say the children had been left in the car for "two or three hours" without food or water after their mother was arrested and said it was embarrassing.
He asked a policeman in one of the videos if it was New Zealand law and went on to say if he left his children in a car for any length of time he would go to jail.