A baptism by virus: Top cop talks about the slings and arrows of his first year
When Police Commissioner Andrew Coster took over the job a year ago, one of the pieces of advice given was to realise it was impossible to please everybody all the time.
He gives himself a high grade for this measure: “I think I’ve been successful in not pleasing everybody through the whole time I’ve been in the job,” he says.
Coster discovered quickly that being the brunt of political attack and criticism was part of the job. The police wield a lot of power, and so also attract a great deal of scrutiny.
One of the most theatrical was National MP Simon Bridges’ recent description of Coster as a “wokester”.
Bridges said that was prompted by concern at the direction Coster was taking: “The whole thing of what Police are doing under him has changed to ‘by consent,’ more hui and understanding.”
Bridges said that had come at the expense of a focus on actually catching criminals, and a rise in violence and gang activity.
Coster talks a lot about a “collaborative” approach to policing, the “journey” he is taking police on, and the need for “community buy-in” for actions police take.
Such catchphrases do not necessarily fit with political tough talk — although it was Coster’s focus on community that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern highlighted when saying why Coster was appointed to the role.
Coster resists jabbing back at Bridges, but does defend himself over the point Bridges made, saying it was possible to both catch criminals and do what Bridges calls the wokester work: trying to stop people becoming criminals in the first place.
He says nothing has changed on his watch in terms of tackling organised crime.
“The basis of what we are doing on organised crime is what we have always done: investigation, taking assets, prosecution. That’s a given. What we are doing is bringing to that some other layers that if we don’t do them, then we’ll be doing the former forever and a day.”
At the other end of the spectrum, Coster has found himself criticised for not being woke enough: in recent weeks, the Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft, Privacy Commissioner John Edwards and Race Relations Commissioner Meng Foon have all had a go over various police practices such as the use of CCTV, and sending photographs of young people on the street into a police database.
This week, Foon retracted his statement that police were racist — a comment that had drawn an objection from Coster. “This isn’t unique to New Zealand. I think it’s a bunch of quite important conversations happening that are shifting social norms and therefore expectations of policing at a rate that I’ve not seen in my time.”
He sees it as his job to deal with that debate and try to ensure it did not hurt those on the front line.
“The thing I’m concerned about is to make sure our people realise we value what they do out there every day.”
Dealing with such criticism pales in comparison to dealing with the death of a police officer on duty.
Coster says the hardest time for him and the force over the last year was the death of Constable Matthew Hunt, who was shot and killed during a routine traffic stop in Massey last June.
“A lot of the other things that happen you kind of roll with, and you go ‘well that’s just part of the job’. But you never want the loss on one of your people to be part of the job. You can’t overstate the way that event reverberated through the organisation because he was doing what we do thousands of times every week across the country, a vehicle stop, and without warning was shot and killed.”
If you judge a Police Commissioner’s success by the crime rate, Coster has had a rip-snorter of a first year.
There was a 6.6 per cent drop in crimes in 2020 — including a 15 per cent drop in burglaries: one area Coster promised to focus on when he started the job.
The numbers would have been even more impressive if reports of assault had not spiked up 12 per cent due to the creation of new family violence offences.
Coster does not judge success by the crime rate, saying only about 20 per cent of crime was reported. Nor does he flatter himself by assuming the 2020 drop had anything to do with him: he gives almost all credit to Covid-19 and the lockdowns.
Coster’s first year was something of a baptism by virus.
Coster officially took over April 3, in the first week of the level four lockdown. Beards were all the rage in the police force at the time.
One of his first instructions to the front-line staff was to shave those beards off. He started with his own. It was, he said, a practical measure: front-line cops had to wear masks. Masks and beards are not a good fit. But the beards were the least of his worries.
“It fundamentally changed overnight what we were doing. Normal crime dropped through the floor and we had this new responsibility of playing our role in keeping the nation safe from a new threat.”
Coster defends the decision to take a light hand, pointing to other countries’ experiences.