Doubts about recruitment
WELLINGTON: Questions have been raised about the quality of new police officers after four recruits were stood down for misconduct in the past year.
Two of the new recruits are the subject of criminal investigations.
Police would not say what allegations the recruits faced, nor when the investigation would be completed.
It was understood the recruits were not on duty at the time, and three of the incidents happened offcampus.
General manager of training Superintendent Scott Fraser said if any of the allegations against the four were upheld, it could prevent them from graduating.
‘‘Four individuals have been stood down over the last 12 months,’’ he said.
‘‘Just to put it in context, there are 940 recruits that have trained and four are currently stood down and whilst I can’t talk about the individual circumstances, we do not graduate anyone who does not meet our standards.’’
In a separate incident, also investigated by police, up to six recruits from an intake which graduated last month were caught drinking in their barracks.
They were allowed to graduate, despite their behaviour falling below what was expected.
Police Minister Stuart Nash stood by the college’s decision.
‘‘I’m assuming what happened is the superintendent of the college, who is a very fine man and has been doing this for a long time, made a judgement call that the recruits have learned their lesson,’’ Mr Nash said.
Now, questions are being raised over whether a government initiative to get an extra 1800 officers on the streets might have come at the expense of recruit quality.
National Party police spokesman Chris Bishop said it had.
‘‘This is just the natural consequence of a desire to go absolutely hard on quantity, and I suspect it has come at the expense of quality,’’ Mr Bishop said. But Mr Nash denied that. ‘‘We are not dropping the quality or the standards of recruits coming into the New Zealand police service,’’ he said.
‘‘It just wouldn’t be fair on the communities they serve, but it also wouldn’t be fair on the recruits themselves.
‘‘We need good, high quality people serving our communities and I think we’re getting those.’’ — RNZ