Sunday Star Times
February 1, 2004
From rabble rouser to role
model
by David Fisher
He wanted to be the
country's first Maori police commissioner.
Clint Rickards, who started life on the wrong side of the tracks, was headed
for the top.
His crime-fighting methods won praise from police commissioner George Hawkins.
And his appointment in 2001 as assistant commissioner was the sort of vote of
confidence that marked his 20 years as blessed with fortune - but earned with
hard work.
When appointed, commissioner Rob Robinson said
Rickards had beaten "strong candidates" for the job.
"He has a strong operational background, is a successful operational and senior
manager, and brings an operational perspective to my close support group."
A burly 1.8 metres, Rickards, 43, is an imposing figure. His huge, tattooed
arms can bench-press 205kg, he weighs around 130kg and
prefers a shaved head.
Perhaps he wasn't so far from the rabble rouser he
was in Rotorua, where he was kicked out of intermediate school and brought home
by police for breaking into buildings, stealing and committing petty crime.
"If something wasn't nailed down it would find its way into my pocket,"
Rickards said in a 2001 interview with the Waikato Times.
But even then, joining the police and wearing the blue uniform was a dream
Rickards had long held. He would spend afternoons with his dog Fury, a german shepherd, teaching commands as if it were a police
dog.
Discipline became important in Rickard's sporting life - he was a star of the
Joining the police aged 18, he had a gun in his face
in his first week. Displaying the persistence that would mark out Rickards'
rise to the top, he spent four hours chasing the offender.
"It's the variety of challenges and the unknown that I love. You never
know what you are going to get."
Rickards made detective in four years, then worked as an undercover police
officer investigating a drug syndicate in Invercargill.
He returned to Rotorua, then moved to Hawke's Bay,
where he became a senior sergeant. He went back to the South Island, running
Southland's CIB, then in 1994 was made area controller of Papakura in
After Gisborne police boss Rana Waitai
left the force for politics in 1997, Rickards took his job as superintendent
district commander. When he left there for
"It should be remembered that crime fighting is not solely the function of
the police - it should be incumbent upon all people in the community to address
these problems," he told the New Zealand Herald in 1999.
Rickards was also building an impressive academic record. He has a masters degree in public policy, was expected to have
completed his doctorate by now and had completed a business degree and a
diploma in Maori development.
Working in the
Also in
Under his watch, more children were eating breakfast before school, more Maori
got driver's licences and police became involved with local iwi.
More officers were seen on patrol, and a range of crime-fighting programmes
were started.
"If you keep doing the same things the same way you will keep getting the
same results," he said. "And if things don't change it is my people
that would be affected and to me that is unacceptable."
Things did change. In the year Rickards came to town,
Hawkins was full of praise, visiting Rickards on the day the national figures
were released and citing policing in the
"This performance demonstrates a police district that is in touch with its
community and knows how to curb the incidence of crime," he said.
The figures were credited to "the ordinary policeman and policewoman doing
a good job".
"This excellent achievement ought to be acknowledged.
Results that took Rickards close to the job he had wanted, and strived for -
the commissioner's.
He was fond of saying: "The police force has given me everything I ever wanted."
Rickards, who may be stood down tomorrow, faces being questioned as he was
while a teenager - back on the other side of the law.