Twizel’s new police officer in north to south shift
From the middle of the North Island to the middle of the South Island, Twizel’s new police officer is ready to get stuck into his new role.
Senior Constable Bruce Francis started work in Twizel last week after 16 and a half years experience policing in communities across the North Island.
His most recent post was four and half years in Waiouru. Francis joins Senior Constable Les Andrew in Twizel. He said he had always wanted to work in the Mackenzie Country, something that was ignited following a couple of hunting trips in the district. It was a couple of hunting trips, based out of Tekapo, a few years back that had drawn him to the district.
‘‘If I ever got the chance to come down here then I would move down. ‘‘So the job here came up so I applied and yeah managed to get it... so that’s kind of why I’ve ended up here.’’ Even in his first week, he said he had picked up on how much of a popular destination Twizel and the wider Mackenzie Country was with an influx of people coming to the region over summer.
One of the major parts of the job for police officers and highway patrol officers in Waiouru was monitoring traffic on the Desert Road (State Highway 1) which for many years has been notoriously bad for fatal and high speed crashes, he said.
This was an area he was keen to get involved with in the Mackenzie as having a police presence on the road hopefully would mean people’s driving behaviour would improve, which could equate to less serious crashes on the roads, he said.
‘‘No-one wants to go to fatal [crash],’’ he said. He was also looking forward to doing more Land Search and Rescue work with the Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park right on the door step. Francis has moved into the post that Constable Joe Rush previously had. Rush made the shift from Twizel to Timaru to his new role as Youth Aid Officer in August.
Previously Rush had been a rural constable in Twizel for eight years, but the opportunity to develop his policing career prompted the move back to Timaru.