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The Daily News
December 30 1997
Commissioner welcomes continuing scrutiny of police
NZPA
Increased scrutiny of the police is welcome, but has
not uncovered gross negligence, says Police Commissioner Peter Doone.
Questions have been asked during 1997 about police handling of several high
profile cases, including the Bain family homicide in Dunedin
and Peter Ellis' conviction for child abuse in Christchurch.
The scrutiny led to an independent review by the Police Complaints Authority
and the police into the initial police Bain investigation and also a review
of the conduct of a detective involved in the Ellis case.
Mr Doone said police attended 1.6 million incidents each year.
"Among those 1.6 million things . . . we get some excellent results and
yet there is an enormous focus on the three, four or five individual cases
where there may be -- and I'm certainly not conceding any of this -- some
deficiencies.
"I have certainly been concerned about that and have been very active in
inquiring into the validity or otherwise of those (claimed deficiencies). No
organisation, or person or group of people is going to achieve a perfect
record.
"But I think our record is pretty good."
Mr Doone said the heavy workload of police meant it could not
respond to every incident with the same amount of detail.
He said the work of police should not be underestimated, and compared the
number of jobs police attended to Fire Service callouts.
"To put that into perspective, the Fire Service every year attends about
50,000 fire calls, including false alarms. I don't want to minimise what they
do at all, but I just want to say the total volume of police work is about 30
times that of the Fire Service."
Mr Doone said he would not accept sloppy investigations from his officers,
but some crimes had to be put ahead of others.
"That (prioritising) leads to a risk that officers may, through pressure
of work or otherwise, try to take shortcuts and not necessarily ensure
quality is there.
"I have been very active this year in telling my staff that is not
acceptable . . . I am giving a renewed focus to training in a lot of
specialist areas in terms of traffic and crime and so forth to ensure
whatever risks there are minimised or eliminated."
Mr Doone said he had been frustrated that none of the 200 extra police
officers delivered under the National-New Zealand First coalition agreement
would serve in the central region -- including Wellington, Taranaki, Manawatu, Hawke's Bay
and Wairarapa.
"I guess I am disappointed in some respects that a lot of the frontline
staff are not coming to Wellington.
The priority area has been Auckland and to a
lesser extent Christchurch."
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