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Focus on
Police Competence |
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On any day of the week
in the busy courtrooms of the Manukau District Court in south Auckland, one
of the emerging crisis areas of our justice system is on parade. The charge sheets are
full of burglaries, assaults, rapes and murders. Between 100 and 120 people a
day are shunted through one courtroom. It is at courts like
this that concerns are growing the police are lining up the wrong people for
the wrong crime, or letting the guilty walk free through lack of evidence. The Sunday Star-Times
has been told of a malaise affecting a crucial juncture in the justice
system, police prosecutions. This is where the
9000-strong police force puts its cases before the courts for judgement. This
is where justice should be done. Shoddy preparatory work
or poor investigation carries a high cost--wrong convictions or unwarranted
acquittals. Lawyers say these are
precisely the risks being run by the police. The Criminal Bar Association and
the Bar Association, which represent criminal lawyers and lawyers
respectively, have raised concerns about a decline in the quality of police
preparatory work for court. Stuart Grieve, QC, of the Bar Association, points
particularly to deficiencies in casework for the lower end of seriousness of
crimes. But David Jones, a
spokesman for the Criminal Bar Association, says lawyers in his association
are complaining about the quality of police work right up to the serious
cases. "I have real
concerns about the level of experience and the level of competence of a
significant number of police officers involved in serious criminal
investigations," he says. Police commissioner Rob
Robinson's brow furrows at the lawyers' comments. He is the big-chested cops'
cop who has the job of cleaning up after the ignominy of Peter Doone's
departure from the helm of the police. With a reputation for
integrity, it is hard to imagine Robinson would ever make the kind of
personal misjudgements that saw Doone bundled out. But he faces the task
of rebuilding public confidence knocked by Doone's actions and which has been
knocked by further incidents since. Robinson started off
with a hard line on police ethics, prompting grumbles in the ranks about his
willingness to take officers to court for offences. Looking further, he has
outlined to the Star-Times a plan to focus on the very core of police
functions. He foreshadows closures or downgrading of some community
stations--in consultation with communities--and is reviewing police involvement
in some community roles. Meanwhile the signs of
a police force cutting corners or abusing its powers keep occurring. Whangarei has become a
hot spot of concern about police violence, with lawyers banding together to
monitor police. The moves follow a judge's decision to throw out a resisting
arrest charge against two local teenagers on the grounds they were acting in
self-defence. In Auckland came the
astonishing case last month in which three teenage girls--Lucy Akatere, Tania
Vini and Krishla Fuataha--were wrongly imprisoned for seven months on the
false testimony of a 13-year-old. In Auckland, where
crimes are more brutal and more frequent, the former glamour squad of the
police has become a sweatshop. Detectives at the criminal investigation
branch are struggling under high workloads and staff shortages. Robinson pleads guilty
to at least some of the charges that police prosecution work is getting
worse. He confirms crown
solicitors have raised with him concerns about the quality of police work for
"lower-end" cases, the common assaults, some dishonesty, some of
the thefts and burglaries. Robinson blames overwork. Although overall
reported crime was down 2% in the year to June, calls to the police keep
rising. Also on the up is violence, rising 8% in the year to June after
plateauing for the previous five years. Robinson points to
areas with burgeoning populations like Auckland, north of Auckland and the
Bay of Plenty. It is here that in-trays are overloading for police, he says. "The risk that I
as commissioner and we as New Zealanders face is that in those areas where
we're expecting that of police staff, the risk is we will not meet our
standards from time to time," says Robinson. He believes there are
common threads in the problem of poor police prosecution work, and in the
case of the wrongful conviction of the three girls. "As we work
through the case with the girls, we will surface some issues I think that
touch on the pressures on staff, the ability of supervisors to provide appropriate
levels of supervision and direction to investigational staff when they're
carrying quite serious files," he says. But Robinson also makes
a plea for more reasonable expectations from the public. "The police
expectation is the police will not get things wrong. It does fail to
recognise that we are, as individual police officers, human." "There's the
tension of the public expectation of perfection, and the reality of any big
organisation," he says. Around the country, at
the McDonald's franchises or pubs former senior detectives have left the
force to run, the sound of "I told you so" can be faintly heard. The wave of community
policing that overtook the police in the 1990s saw a downgrading and
dispersal of the prestigious but often arrogant CIB. CIB teams lead
investigations into serious crimes, do the court preparatory work for the big
cases and they help set the tone for the standard of investigative and
preparatory work further down the chain. Communities welcomed
the new police stations in their areas and the friendly cops on the beat but
decentralisation meant more jacks-of-all trades, fewer clusters of specialist
crime fighters. At the time many
detectives warned that the price would be poorer investigations and more
mistakes, and less ability to detect crime. In one of Robinson's
provincial police stations, a detective who doesn't want to be named talks of
the series of colleagues who have left recently, burned out by a string of
homicides in the area. He believes there aren't enough resources or staff to
provide good community policing as well as good specialist services like the
CIB. "The CIB has been
pretty much run down in a lot of ways. We're having trouble recruiting people
into the CIB because there are no real incentives to be there other than
pride in work. That challenge in itself can be something that can eventually
wear you out," says the detective, who
has 15 years' experience. downgrading the CIB
under community policing has taken several forms. The status of the CIB has
diminished in part because allowances have been cut, from around $5000 for
newly qualified detectives, to $1376. The number of ranks has
also been cut, leading to more responsibility From Focus C1 fewer senior officers.
The detective senior-sergeants who were the second-in-commands on major
inquiries have been largely replaced by more junior officers. Heavier workloads at
the CIB have meant some of the less serious cases the CIB used to investigate
and prosecute, such as street robberies, are more likely these days to be
passed on to uniformed staff. "Basically there
are not enough hours in the day to complete the work we have got. There is
serious crime and you're doing other people's jobs, because they're
away," says the detective. "There seems to be
a dumping of more and more responsibility on people further down the
line," he says. Other insiders say
standards in prosecution work have fallen nationwide not just because of case
overload but because the CIB structure has disintegrated. CIB units used to
gain leadership from specialists at a national level, ensuring a rigorous
standard for prosecutions was maintained around the country. Now they report
to district commanders who don't take the same interest in keeping up standards,
sources say. Under Robinson's plan
to refocus on core policing, the CIB is clawing back a little recognition
from colleagues. An increased allowance for detectives is due to be announced
in the next fortnight at a cost of millions of dollars for the police
administration. Some drawing back from
community policing principles has already begun, with the regrouping of some
CIB teams, rather than their dispersal to smaller stations. David Jones from the
Criminal Bar Association points to inexperience as one of the recurring
problems now facing police. "A lot of senior
experience officers have left the force and that I think was a great loss to
the police and the general public," he says. Auckland's CIB squads,
which are dealing with more cases and more serious cases, have less
experienced officers to draw on than anywhere else in the country. It is
Auckland's CIB that is under investigation for its handling of the wrongful
conviction of the three teenagers. The average length of
service in the Auckland area for CIB staff is 10.1 years, compared to an
average of 13.5 for the rest of the country. In the South Island, 15 or 16
years is the norm. A less experienced
force is partly a legacy of a drive in the '80s to remove a top-heavy layer
of burnt-out officers. The Perf scheme did the job but is continuing to suck
out older staff as they approach the cut-off age of 49. The scheme was closed
to new entrants in 1992. New staff are getting older on average but the
standard contract for an officer is just 15 years, with five-yearly renewals
after that. Police human resources
general manager Jon White isn't troubled by any lack of experience. "My belief is that
overall levels of experience haven't dropped significantly and certainly
aren't a point of concern. What we do have to be careful of and mindful of is
that we do have some areas where the average length of service is lower than
others," he says, referring to two highly stressed parts of the Auckland
region, North Share and Manukau. Robinson knows the
public isn't as happy as it used to be with the police. Every opportunity he
gets, he asks people what they want. They tell him three
things: they want police to arrive immediately if they ring in a crisis; they
want an investigation carried out if they complain of a crime; and they want
the police to follow through and prosecute and preferably convict if the
offendor is identified. These three
commandments are now guiding Robinson's thinking. He is preparing to draw
back from the dispersed style of community policing, with all its community
tasks, and towards a no-frills service to meet the core of public
expectation. Flush with extra money
and 40% more staff over the 1990s, the police rolled out suburban stations
and community bases. It was part of a theory that they needed to reach out to
their communities in order to prevent crime. Now the police have
realised the model is too expensive. The police property portfolio of $250m
incurs high maintenance costs and a $38m capital charge from the government. Today the police have
almost 300 stations and another 103 bases around the country. In the greater
Auckland area they run a surprising 72 stations, in addition to five regional
headquarters. McDonald's, another fixture of the suburban landscape, can manage
only 58 in the same area. Can the police sustain
this many in Auckland? The blunt answer from Robinson is "no". Across one part of the
city there are something like 12 or 13 walk-in facilities within quite a
small district. "I think
practically it will require communities and police to work through where they
want walk-in facilities and where they're happy to have on-call police
service facilities," he says. He believes police
links with communities are now so well-developed, through a variety of boards
and consultative mechanisms, that bricks and mortar are no longer the only
way to connect with the community. In some cases it may
mean the staffing of a community base with a community volunteer, rather than
a sworn officer. Also on Robinson's list
for change is for police to consider future involvement in many of community
services, such as in youth at risk programmes and classroom education. Robinson says the
public tell him it doesn't want to compromise on any of the three
commandments because of what are seen as lower priority functions. "Some of our youth
at risk programmes are delivering stunning results and they are very, very
sensible investments," he says. But the police are
considering handing over the lead role in the programmes to other community
groups, such as iwi organisations. The police would remain involved, but at a
lower level. Similarly the police
are considering whether its classroom education work is a core function. "I'm not talking
about that we'll turn it off tomorrow and go and do something else, only that
we would move out of that if there were others delivering an equivalent
service," says Robinson. As he struggles to make
headway with a huge bureaucracy with a very strong sense of itself, Robinson
pleads for a little more trust from the public that the police will overcome
its weaknesses. "These things are
worrisome each time they emerge. What I'd like is for the public to have an
absolute confidence that if these matters do emerge and are raised as points
of concern, that they're absolutely confident that my managers and myself
will go and have a real close look. We won't be looking to just put the
things aside," he says. -------------------- CAPTION: Kevin Stent Police
commissioner Rob Robinson faces the task of restoring public confidence in
his force. |
