Garth George: Towards the best police force

The best news I've heard so far this year is that in just nine months in the job, Police Commissioner Peter Marshall has already made a big difference to what was once one of the finest police forces in the world.

To do so, he has surrounded himself with a posse of highly-respected senior officers, among them Superintendent Mike Clement, who for some years was an inspector and the area commander for Western Bay of Plenty, based in Tauranga. This week he took up the job of Auckland City district commander.

The new top cop for the Bay of Plenty and the rest of the North Island from Waikato south is Assistant Commissioner Grant Nicholls.

Commissioner Marshall took over last April after the previous (and unpopular) Commissioner Howard Broad announced he would not seek reappointment. It is significant that Mr Broad made his announcement after two sessions with then-Police Minister, the no-nonsense Judith Collins. No doubt Mr Broad was told at the first of those meetings that any application for another term would not be favourably received.

It was during his reign that police morale fell to an all-time low. There was the Commission of Inquiry into police conduct which saw a number of former police officers and more than one high-profile serving officer charged with sex offences; and there were the "anti-terror" raids in the Eastern Bay of Plenty - an over-reaction if there ever was one. The aftermath of those continues as various charges stumble through an overloaded court system.

However, according to reports much of the damage done to police morale during the terms of Mr Broad and some of his predecessors has already been undone by Commissioner Marshall and his team.

And perhaps the most telling evidence of this is that rank-and-file coppers no longer refer to Police Headquarters as "Bullshit Castle", as an anonymous police officer called it in a report only last year.

It seems that Commissioner Marshall is determined that he and his top team keep themselves in touch with what is going on in the front line. It is reported that Mr Marshall himself was out with the rank and file on the late shift on New Year's Eve, helping staff to deal with a young woman cutting her wrists with a knife at the end of Princes Wharf.

And that not long after, Deputy Commissioner Mike Bush and a number of other senior officers were at the mortuary while disaster victim identification staff were helping with the post-mortem examinations of victims of the Carterton balloon tragedy.

Mr Marshall is reported as saying that in the past executive staff would go out "sporadically, shall we say" with frontline officers, but now they would be out there regularly.

As one policeman put it, it was unheard of for the Commissioner of Police to go out on the beat. "The guys really respond to that. He's a very inspiring man".

While the rise in morale of the force of 12,000, who attend 3000-odd jobs a day, is of paramount importance, other changes are being made by the triumvirate at the top - Mr Marshall, Mr Bush and Deputy Commissioner Viv Rickard - in the way the police do their jobs.

For instance, every officer in the country is to be encouraged, when attending a violent incident, to think about what can be done to prevent it happening again. And neighbourhood policing teams, which have been a huge success since Mr Bush trialled them in South Auckland, will be extended throughout the country.

If all this good news is true, then we can look forward to having again one of the best police forces in the world. Let's give them our support.

garth.george@hotmail.com