Waikato police chief rubbishes leaked report

Waikato police crime manager Detective Inspector Peter Devoy is rubbishing reports that his CIB staff are "shelving" serious criminal investigations because of staff shortages at the front line.

This despite an admission that 24 serious crime cases in Hamilton are at present not allocated for detective work.

Contents of a leaked internal report were detailed at the weekend in the Waikato Times, which said some of the unattended cases related to the sexual violation of children.

The report was written by Acting Detective Senior Sergeant Nigel Keall.

He complained to district commander Superintendent Kelvin Powell that much time and money was spent training detectives and to "turn around and deploy" the same staff for duties that were "effectively uniform constable" jobs was a poor allocation of resources.

Hamilton police are understood to be considering rostering CIB staff on during peak periods, which include Friday and Saturday nights.

There was an implication that crime cases were less of a priority for police than urgent callouts, with detectives being rostered on to help out frontline staff with weekend work.

But Mr Devoy rejected that.

Speaking on behalf of Mr Powell, he said the integrity and thoroughness of CIB investigations was in no way being compromised by heavy workloads.

It was no secret that all police districts would welcome more staff, he said, but work on "the more serious investigations" was not being ignored in favour of responding to more immediate callouts.

Mr Devoy said seven new staff had begun at the station yesterday. "We'll be welcoming 10 others next Monday and another four the Thursday after that. Staff are always coming in."

Attention would later be paid to identifying who had leaked Mr Keall's report.