The Ghost of Commissioners Past: the legacy Peter Marshall inherits
New Zealand Police has a new Commissioner. Peter Marshall commenced his planned three-year tenure in the top job on 3 April, replacing Howard Broad.
As every member understands, policing is a unique job delivering an incredibly wide range of services in response to public needs and cries for help. Every Commissioner also faces a unique set of challenges as he or she does the best job they can to lead an organisation of more than 11,000 people to deliver those services.
Peter Marshall will not have the luxury of time to ‘get his feet under the desk’ as he faces huge immediate challenges.
These include maintaining the on-going response to the Christchurch earthquake while ensuring ‘business-as-usual’ policing across New Zealand can continue to function.
At the same time, Commissioner Marshall takes the reins when the Government is pushing hard for ‘fiscal restraint’.
Public sector chief executives have been told in no uncertain terms: ‘we expect you to do more with less.’
It seems safe to assume Commissioner Marshall has been given the same message.
How Commissioners respond to the unique challenges of their tenure not only determines how history remembers them, but also shapes the Police for years to come.
And as philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
So as Peter Marshall takes over the top job, Police News casts a historian’s eye over the challenges and achievements of those who came before him. It is their legacy he inherits.
Richard Macdonald - Commissioner 1994-1996
Richard Macdonald became Police Commissioner not long after the 1992 merger when the Traffic Safety Service was brought into Police.
The challenges of integrating the former TSS workforce and adopting a greater road safety focus across Police, were considerable.
The challenges were not without reward, as the road toll dropped to its lowest (at the time) in decades.
At the same time, sworn police numbers were increasing as the National Government completed its 1990 election promise to hire another 900 officers.
However, while the ‘Banks 900’ additional police officers had been delivered, they were\ not fully funded for the overheads of the additional staff – like vehicles, radios, training requirements, and station space.
The more financially-minded John Luxton had taken over as Minister of Police from the more operationally-focused John Banks.
Police, led by Richard Macdonald, had to try to find ways to balance the budgets, and the squeeze started.
‘Civilianisation’ became the new trend, with non-sworn staff numbers increasing by 89% between 1990 and 1995.
Morale began to suffer and attrition – especially amongst experienced staff – rose markedly.
During Macdonald’s tenure, networked technology was beginning to emerge as the ‘way of the future’.
Email was becoming more common and the business possibilities of the Internet were beginning to become apparent.
With technology came new ways of working and drives for greater centralisation of communications and information systems.
Against this backdrop, Macdonald signed the initial contract for the infamous INCIS (Integrated National Crime Information System) in 1994.
While INCIS ultimately proved to be a $100 million mistake, other projects commenced under Richard Macdonald – such as co-location of Police and Fire Communications Centres – have proved more successful.
Peter Doone - Commissioner 1996-2000
Peter Doone had been Deputy Commissioner under Richard Macdonald. As he took the reins, staffing had become a serious concern for the Association and the public, with real pressure coming on in many communities.
At one stage the frontline in Auckland was 10% below strength.
At the same time, budget-driven squeezes on operational equipment were resulting in a steady stream of ‘bad news’ stories about officers who couldn’t get access to vehicles, radios, cell phones or other equipment to do the job.
Stories of Police cars without warrants of fitness, desks without staplers, and stations without toilet paper created headaches both for the Commissioner and his Ministers of Police, Jack Elder and then Clem Simich.
Commissioner Doone faced almost a perfect storm of challenges.
The wheels were coming off the INCIS project, as its costs ballooned with no sign of completion. INCIS’s problems were in part due to the huge fiscal restraint placed on Police (and the public sector more generally) in the mid-to late-1990s.
Government, backed by Treasury, had insisted on ‘efficiencies’ from INCIS to be paid for by cutting 540 staff.
The money was being spent but the efficiencies hadn’t eventuated, the staff couldn’t be cutand budgets faced renewed pressure.
While the Police Association was warning about the rising threat of methamphetamine, cash-strapped Police Districts were scrapping drug and organised crime squads to re-deploy resources to cover the growing holes.
While the National-New Zealand First coalition, elected in 1996, promised 500 more police, the Government also sent in consultant Doug Martin to identify savings in Police.
The 1998 report, known as the Martin Review, recommended 445 job cuts to deliver savingsof about $50 million.
Peter Doone battled hard against the Treasury driven cost-cutting demands, arguing they would harm policing.
A compromise of 380 job cuts, for $35 million in savings, was negotiated, based on outsourcing and restructuring. PNHQ was down-sized to become the Office of the Commissioner.
The four Police Regions were dismantled, 16 Districts became 12, and the new Service Centres were set up.
This followed an earlier amalgamation of 29 Districts down to 16 in 1995.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner backed the Policing 2000 project to look for creative ways to police more effectively and efficiently, without taking the knife to important services.
Despite Doone’s efforts, morale took a further hit and showed again in attrition amongst experienced sworn officers.
INCIS was finally abandoned in May 1999. A Commission of Inquiry, later turned into a Ministerial Inquiry by the incoming Labour Government, was set up to investigate the debacle.
Robert (‘Rob’ or ‘Robbie’) Robinson – Commissioner 2000 – 2005
Rob Robinson’s appointment was seen by many as an attempt to ‘steady the ship’ with a cautious and reassuring hand after the turmoil of the Doone years.
Sadly that was not to be. The shooting of Steven Wallace in Waitara in 2000 sparked an unjustified but highly-politicised attack on Police conduct and integrity, which continued to affect public and media attitudes for years to follow, and gave impetus to the transition from the Police Complaints Authority to the Independent Police Conduct Authority.
In 2001, for the first time, a civilian Deputy Commissioner was appointed. Lyn Provost brought a better understanding and better connections into the Wellington public sector.
This helped to mitigate and remedy some of the fallout from the Doone years and INCIS debacle.
Meanwhile, the legacy of cost-cutting and budget cuts had yet to reach a head.
The loss of experience in the CIB, especially in Auckland, reached crisis levels. Late 1990s cuts to the vehicle budget resulted in a fleet that by 2000 Commissioner Robinson described as appalling and a health and safety issue.
$20 million was set aside to fix the problem with 404 new Holdens purchased by the end of 2001.
While the new Highway Patrol was established, with a dedicated staff resource of 225 officers, budgets generally remained virtually frozen through the early part of Robinson’s tenure and internal savings directives were issued with regularity.
DNA and forensic services were cut, travel and overtime was restricted and hiring freezes were implemented. Ideas such as shutting the Royal
New Zealand Police College and outsourcing training to polytechnics were mooted.
More seriously, the incoming Government insisted the Police fund the 2000 pay settlement from within its existing budget.
The Commissioner responded by cancelling three large recruit wings from early 2001.
This contributed to huge staff shortages in Auckland by the end of 2002, which prompted Police to recruit from the UK in order to bring a large number of experienced police on-stream urgently through a new conversion course.
Staff shortages also led to public and political pressure, such as controversy over more than a thousand ‘unassigned files’ across Auckland, which blew up in 2002.
Police instigated Operation Cavalry, rotating additional staff into Counties-Manukau to try to get on top of the backlog.
However, the assistance did not fundamentally address the shortages and the issue blew up again in 2005.
Most tellingly, the disappearance of Iraena Asher from Piha in October 2004, following a string of high-profile 111 system failures, revealed enormous problems stemming from long-term under-investment in Police’s three Communications Centres.
The Police Association had earlier issued warnings that under-funding had created a tragedy waiting to happen.
An urgent inquiry vindicated those warnings. The inquiry’s report resulted in emergency funding of $45 million (outside the normal Budget process) to prop the Communications Centres up and begin to seriously address the shortfalls and pressures affecting them.
At the same time, New Zealand’s burgeoning methamphetamine problem began to reach epidemic levels.
The Police Association’s warnings – ignored by Government and the Police hierarchy during the late 1990s, as they focused on cost-cutting and restructuring – came to fruition in a way that could no longer be ignored.
In a classic example of shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted, the Government and Police scrambled to dedicate resources to combat the problem.
Howard Broad - Commissioner 2006-2011
Howard Broad was the thirtieth Commissioner of Police, and brought a new style of strategic thinking to the top job.
As well as extensive uniform and CIB experience, and a stint as a District Commander, Commissioner Broad had been involved in a range of strategic and planning roles such as involvement in the Policing 2000 project.
Consequently, he had spent a lot of time exploring the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of policing tasks. He had also learnt ‘how Wellington works’, and so how to effectively engage on Police’s behalf with the politicians, bureaucrats and central monitoring agencies such as Treasury and the State Services Commission, which have enormous influence over Police funding.
Howard Broad’s early tenure coincided with a brief period of almost unprecedented prosperity.
Government revenues were healthy, and the Labour-New Zealand First coalition agreement signed in 2005 promised 1,000 new sworn staff (which quickly became known as the ‘GNIs’, because they were funded as a ‘Government New Initiative’ spend in Budget-speak).
The Police budget expanded, as long-ignored shortfalls and pressure points were finally addressed.
Easing of the purse-strings meant more initiatives could be implemented, such as the Electronic Crime Laboratory, stab resistant body armour (SRBA) roll-out, review of the Police Act 1958 and implementation of the new Policing Act 2008, and the Taser trial and implementation.
As the Police Association ramped up its warnings about the rise of organised crime, in early 2008 the Government decided to establish a new Organised and Financial Crime Agency to improve Police focus on the issue.
Historical under-investment in Counties- Manukau resulted in new staff being dedicated to that District by the National Government elected in 2008.
That election, however, coincided with the seriousness and depth of the global financial crisis beginning to hit home.
Public sector budgets faced freezes or cuts, and public sector departments faced widespread job losses.
With violent crime continuing to rise, and public demands for reassurance, Police was spared savage cuts, but pressure has nevertheless been firmly applied to find savings and efficiencies.
A number of reviews have been established seeking to identify ‘better ways to do things’. Those reviews will deliver reports which the new Commissioner, Peter Marshall, be charged with implementing.
Whether they mark a return to the morale-sapping pressures of the late 1990s/early 2000s remains to be seen.
A surge in attacks on Police, and especially shootings of police officers, threw the issue of Police access to firearms into stark relief.
The Commissioner, along with political leadership, showed clear reluctance to move to full arming.
However, in the face of the facts, backed by a big swing in police and public opinion in favour of arming, a report was called for in late 2010. Responding to this report will an early task for the new Commissioner.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Broad faced serious challenges on another front.
When he was appointed, he told the media that his focus would be on restoring the image of Police after a series of damaging incidents – taken by many to be a reference to fallout from the Waitara shooting and the Communications Centres failure.
This focus was rocked by the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct, conducted by Dame Margaret Bazley following allegations of historical sexual misconduct by police officers. The 2007 ‘COI Report’, as it became known, created a mesh of reporting and monitoring requirements which have tied up an enormous amount of Police focus to this day.
The Operation Eight raids centred in the Bay of Plenty sparked storms of media and public criticism, which have yet to be played out in court.
The new Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) also flexed its independence, with repeated criticisms of police conduct and policy across a range of issues, particularly fleeing drivers.
An IPCA report on handling of child abuse cases also challenged Police to act to protect its reputation.
The issue was initially raised by the Police Association to draw attention, yet again, to a major risk being created by underfunding.
In a cruel irony, given Howard Broad’s desired focus for his tenure, almost on the eve of his departure, a COI follow-up report by PricewaterhouseCoopers sparked renewed attacks on the image of Police.
Despite that, Commissioner Broad leaves for his successor a Police service which is – in a historical sense – relatively healthy and in good heart, albeit poised at the edge of some very serious challenges.
How Peter Marshall responds to those challenges, only time will tell.
