Part 1: Introduction

Response of the New Zealand Police to the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct: Third monitoring report.

1.1
In this Part, we set out:

  • background information about the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct (the Commission) and our work; and
  • an overview of how we carried out our audit.

1.2
This is the third in a series of reports setting out the progress that the New Zealand Police (the Police) are making towards giving full effect to the Commission's recommendations. Readers unfamiliar with the background to this work may find it helpful to refer to our first1 and second2 reports, which are available on our website (www.oag.govt.nz). We plan to do a final report in 2017.

The Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct

1.3
The Commission released its report in 2007. The report criticised the historical conduct of some police officers and their associates. The conduct included inappropriate sexual activity and a culture of scepticism in dealing with complaints to the Police about adult sexual assault.

1.4
The Commission's findings included 60 recommendations. Most (47) were for the Police, but some were for the then Police Complaints Authority (now the Independent Police Conduct Authority), the Ministry of Justice, and the State Services Commission.

1.5
The Commission's report was clear that the attitudes and behaviours within the Police, and not just the systems and procedures, needed to change.

1.6
Changing the attitudes and behaviours in an organisation can be difficult and usually takes a long time. The Commission recognised this and recommended that we monitor the Police's progress for 10 years. The then Government invited the Auditor-General to carry out the monitoring role, and the Auditor-General accepted the Government's invitation.

The Police's response to the Commission

1.7
We published our first report in June 2009. At that time, the Police had responded in a committed manner to the Commission's findings and were designing the next phase of their work programme. The Police described that next phase as an "implementation" phase.

 

1.8
We published our second report in June 2010. Although the Police had made a significant achievement by fully implementing seven of the Commission's 47 recommendations for the Police,3 we found that the Police's response to the Commission was at a critical point. Without more concerted effort, there was a risk that progress would stall, the achievements of the Police's work programme to that date would dissipate, and the benefits of change would not be realised.

1.9
We identified four important changes that the Police needed to make, based on their progress against each of the Commission's recommendations. The Police needed to:

  • further value and learn from the views of people external to the Police;
  • monitor the effects of the changes on the services they provide;
  • build on the high degree of commitment at senior levels to change, and ensure that all staff understand and support the need for change within the Police; and
  • improve the behaviour of the relatively small number of police officers whose behaviour, including sexually inappropriate behaviour, is inconsistent with the Code of Conduct.

Our expectations of the Police

1.10
For this third report, we expected that, five years into the Police's change programme, at least some of the Police's solutions to the Commission's recommendations would be completed – that is, implemented, used, and continuing to have the desired effect. These effects might include delivering improved services to adult sexual assault complainants and the Police being a safer place to work for women and for staff from minority ethnic groups.

1.11
In our view, the Police's response to the Commission's recommendations is not complete until a policy, procedure, system, or practice is in place, is adhered to, functions as intended, and matches a recommendation's purpose. That is, the necessary activities have taken place and the Police know that those activities have had, or will have, the desired effect (see Figure 1). We acknowledge that the full effect may not be immediately apparent in some instances.

1.12
When completed, not only have the responses to each recommendation been fully implemented but they are also an integral and ongoing part of the Police's routine business practice and culture – and are routinely delivering the desired effect (see Figure 1). The term "embedded" can be used to describe this situation.

Figure 1
What is required for the Police to complete implementation of recommendations from the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct

Figure 1 - What is required for the Police to complete implementation of recommendations from the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct.

How we carried out our audit

1.13
We carried out a performance audit to assess what sustainable improvements have resulted from the Police's work programme for responding to the Commission's recommendations.

1.14
To make this assessment, we examined the Police's progress with making the changes described in paragraph 1.9. We identified a line of inquiry for each of those changes. The four lines of inquiry were:

  • complaints against the Police (further value and learn from the views of people external to the Police);
  • adult sexual assault investigation (monitor the effects of the changes on the services they provide);
  • change management (build on the high degree of commitment at senior levels to change, and ensure that all staff understand and support the need for change within the Police); and
  • Police behaviour (improve the behaviour of the relatively small number of police officers whose behaviour, including sexually inappropriate behaviour, is inconsistent with the Code of Conduct).

1.15
These four lines of inquiry form the subsequent Parts of this report. In each Part, we describe our general expectations for each line of inquiry. For each line of inquiry, we used a combination of the Commission's recommendations and recommendations from our previous reports as indicators of the Police's progress.

1.16
In each Part, we describe the activities the Police have performed and assess what this progress means for achieving important recommendations from the Commission's report. In Appendix 1, we summarise the Police's progress against the Commission's recommendations. In Appendix 2, we summarise the Police's progress against our recommendations from our two previous monitoring reports, and list our recommendations from this report. In this report, we do not comment on the seven completed recommendations (R4, R10, R33, R38, R39, R41, R59).4

1.17
To assess the Police's progress, we carried out about 60 interviews with police staff5 located in the Southern and Bay of Plenty police districts, at Police National Headquarters, and at the Royal New Zealand Police College in Wellington. There are 12 police districts. We chose the Southern and Bay of Plenty districts because they had not been covered in our previous work, one was the location of issues in the past, and because they contained a mix of rural, provincial, urban, and metropolitan policing.

1.18
We chose to visit the Royal New Zealand Police College because of the potential influence of the College's training on police culture. We also observed a course and meeting at the College and attended a briefing at Police National Headquarters.

1.19
We spoke with the New Zealand Police Association, the State Services Commission, a member of the Independent Police Conduct Authority, and members of Te Ohaakii a Hine – National Network for Ending Sexual Violence Together (Te Ohaakii a Hine), an umbrella organisation representing a range of organisations that provide support to victims of sexual violence.

1.20
Most of our fieldwork was conducted early in the 2012 calendar year.

1.21
We sought advice from Peter Neyroud CBE QPM, an international expert in policing.

1.22
We also reviewed and analysed about 400 police documents.

What we did not audit

1.23
We did not audit:

  • the responsibilities of the Commissioner of Police, as set out in section 16(2) of the Policing Act 2008, to act independently;
  • the competence or performance of individual police officers or other staff;
  • the Police's responses to individual complaints about police conduct; and
  • the progress against the Commission's recommendations for agencies other than the Police.

1: Response of the New Zealand Police to the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct: First monitoring report (2009).

2: Response of the New Zealand Police to the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct: Second monitoring report (2010).

3: In our 2010 report, we noted that the Police had fully implemented seven of the Commission's 47 recommendations for the Police:

  • enhancing their policy capability (R4);
  • having the Adult Sexual Assault Investigation Guidelines accessible to staff (R10);
  • disestablishing the disciplinary tribunal system (R33);
  • implementing a Code of Conduct for all staff (R38);
  • amending the Sexual Harassment Policy (R39);
  • clarifying what is inappropriate email and Internet use (R41); and
  • consulting with and involving the State Services Commissioner to ensure that the Police's projects take account of best practice in the public sector (R59).

4: In this and our previous reports, we refer to the Commission's recommendations by using "R" and the recommendation's number.

5: In this report, we use "police staff" to refer to both constabulary (police officers) and non-constabulary staff.

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