National police spokesman Mark Mitchell. Photo / Jed Bradley
National police spokesman Mark Mitchell. Photo / Jed Bradley
National’s police spokesman Mark Mitchell said an 86 per cent increase in staffing at New Zealand Police National Headquarters was unacceptable and that jobs should be pushed back to the frontline.
And in a thinly-veiled criticism of Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, he said strong leadership had been missing.
Mitchell, a former police officer, made his comments in a speech at the Police Association conference in Wellington.
He said later that he understood the need for the minister to be independent of the police but there would be changes.
“There’s going to be some very clear direction given to the commissioner in terms of what our expectations are, what goals we are setting and what we want to achieve,” Mitchell said.
“He can take that and he can operationalise it and he can do operationally what he wants.
“It’s his staff, it’s his organisation but he has got to deliver, just like I’ve got to deliver, because in this country in the past six years, there has been a culture of impunity where people in positions of power, like politicians, don’t hold themselves to account.”
Mitchell often lumps his criticism of the Labour Government with criticism of Coster, who began his five-year term in April 2020 and was immediately thrown into crisis management with the Government.
“Resources and support need to be pushed back to the frontline,” Mitchell said in his speech. “We’ve had an 86 per cent increase in growth at Police National Headquarters. This is not acceptable.”
It was not acceptable when there were stations struggling to get an incident car out on a night shift, he said.
“That has to change.”
“And we need strong leadership that gives the frontline a line, a sense of direction and providing clear communication and support to achieve set goals, because in my view this has also been missing.”
“There’s been mixed messages. There’s been confused messages that are going out to our frontline.
“They have been doing their job with one hand tied behind their back and some of the policy settings we’ve seen in recent times have made that job much harder.”
Asked later what some of those policy settings were, he said the pursuit policy and “taking a passive approach to gang disorder”.
“The Labour Government/Police Commissioner’s version of ‘policing by consent’ is confusing for both the police and the public,” he said.
Police Minister Ginny Andersen. Photo / Mike Scott
Police Minister Ginny Andersen, who spoke to the conference earlier in the day, said Mitchell was out of touch with modern policing, because many of the extra staff were part of specialist groups undertaking investigations.
“Mark’s assertion that having more police working on financial crime, high-tech crime, and organised crime is somehow a waste of time shows just how out of touch he is with modern policing in New Zealand.
“These officers work tirelessly and often have unique skills that mean they can provide support to every police district, including going after the gangs and organised crime and following the money.”
Every police district had more frontline officers due to the Government increasing constabulary numbers by 1800, unlike under the last National Government when the real number of police dropped.
The Police executive director for people services, Cathryn Curran-Tietjens, said in a statement: “It is disingenuous to suggest that these roles are not frontline and are not critical to support frontline staff.”
Certain key operational functions of the Police were carried out in National Headquarters in Wellington and were frontline or operational roles. That included intelligence staff, national organised crime functions and road policing staff.
Areas across all of the Police had experienced significant growth in recent years due to the 1800 growth target, including 700 serious and organised crime roles.
