Growing up in Mid Canterbury, Master’s student Jeremy Procter had a front-row seat to rural life. But it wasn’t until he began research into rural policing that he began to see challenges unique to being a country cop in New Zealand.

“A lot of research, things we're learning about [while studying criminal justice and criminology] and looking at are all from the perspective of cities and urban environments,” Jeremy says. “Reflecting on my upbringing and where I grew up, a lot of things we learnt didn’t really reflect that. So I was really interested in finding a way to bring criminology into these rural areas.”

His research combines a review of existing international literature with interviews of serving officers in Aotearoa. He expected to find familiar themes: isolation, long drives, community overreliance and resource constraints. What he didn’t expect was to unearth distinctly Kiwi issues.

Dogged determination

One surprise came early in the research: the role “farm dogs” play in shaping officer safety.

“One thing that jumped out to me was the prevalence of large dog ownership, really large working dogs or hunting dogs, pig dogs… they can be massive,” Jeremy says. Officers told him stories of stopping vehicles or arriving at rural properties only to be greeted by bounding, unfamiliar animals. 

“It can be quite an intimidating prospect... so naturally, that's something that they're going to strike as a potential threat.”

While dogs were flagged as a challenge, gun ownership – commonly raised in international research – was not such an issue for the New Zealand police officers.

“Pretty much every single officer said, yes, they were aware their community had a high ownership of guns… but they didn’t identify that as something that was particularly concerning to them,” Jeremy says. “They had a lot of trust in their community… because they're farmers and hunters, they could connect that to why they would have those weapons.”

This was the “ethical opposite” to overseas findings, especially in the United States, where high gun ownership is often cited as a major concern for rural officers.

It goes both ways

That same trust extended to how rural communities respond to a police presence. While international studies show that rural residents can be wary of outsiders in uniform, Kiwi officers reported mostly warm receptions.

“In New Zealand, there’s a little bit of [hesitation], but officers didn't express it as being something they found that often,” he says. “Most communities are quite happy to actually have a police presence.”

The challenge, Jeremy says, is that close community connection can lead to overreliance on a single officer. “If they're only reporting to you because they trust you… then they’re going to be calling you in your bed or when you’re with your family… it makes it difficult to step away from the role of a police officer.”

Some officers even reported members of the public delaying a report by a week just to wait until a trusted officer was back on duty.

Jeremy concluded that the differences between the challenges of international rural officers and New Zealand’s officers could be put down to cultural differences, his participants’ generally positive work satisfaction, and NZ Police having comparatively good PR compared with overseas. 

The key consistencies were isolation from support, community reliance, disengaged decision makers and difficult land and conditions. 

Home alone

Officers Jeremy spoke with repeatedly raised the issue of geographic and professional isolation.

“In a rural setting where you're the only one on your shift… [for assistance] you've got to get someone from the town over to come in to help you,” Jeremy says. “That creates a lot of potential danger, but also a lot of stress.”

And it’s not just about waiting for backup. Officers often find themselves transporting people dealing with a mental health crisis across long distances because of a lack of local services and then potentially waiting with them for hours. “There’s not that reciprocal expectation that these services come to these rural areas,” he says.Weather adds yet another layer of complexity. “If it’s absolutely hailing down, there’s snow on the road and they need to get somewhere, they're going to do what they can to get there… but again, it's balancing their safety against the safety of their community.”

One of the more practical but crucial insights from Jeremy’s work was the lack of proper handovers when officers start in a new rural posting as well as at the start of each shift.

“If you're working on your own… you go in and no-one’s there. There's no super formal arrangement. There's really not enough preparation or handover, especially for anyone who has only been policing in a city… you're going to get quite a bit of whiplash from what you're going to experience, what you're going to see, and how you're going to be operating.”

The lack of structured support is also evident after high-stress incidents. Officers described situations that “boiled over” and left them second-guessing their actions – with no local colleague to help put things in context. “Even the most confident and experienced police officers… not having that other voice outside of their head telling them, ‘Hey, you did a good job’, it can lead to a lot [of mental strain],” Jeremy says.

Back to the farm?

Jeremy’s findings don’t call for sweeping reform, but they do highlight opportunities for more targeted support. Rural problems require unique solutions rather than simply implementing metropolitan protocol and policy, Jeremy says. 

“It’s about understanding those officers’ realities and building systems that fit them… solutions [that] would greatly limit the impact on officers and potentially increase the wellbeing of rural police, creating safer communities.” 

And he plans to walk that talk.

“I am going to continue with this research. I'm going to keep looking at what these challenges are, what the impacts of these challenges are and how might we come to solutions to these... One thing that I really love is the potential to help.”