The ‘wokester’ deals it back
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster refused to take several attacks by National MP Simon Bridges lying down when he came to a select committee yesterday.
The exchange got so heated that Bridges asked Coster to treat gang members as firmly as he treated members of Parliament.
Bridges has been reprimanded by National leader Judith Collins over his labelling of the commissioner this week as a ‘‘wokester’’.
The attack came days before Coster was due to appear before the justice select committee for the agency’s annual review.
It also came as police released new figures that indicated a rise in gang numbers – although Coster has said the number would naturally increase, since additions to the list were easy but it was not clear who had left.
The most fiery exchange came over the concept of ‘‘policing by consent’’, with Bridges opening up by asking Coster: ‘‘Do the police still arrest people in this country?’’
Coster shot back that the idea of policing by consent was not new – in fact going back to the creation of modern policing by
Robert Peel in 1829.
‘‘It has never been that police arrest and charge people for every possible crime,’’ Coster said.
Bridges brought up several incidents from his electorate where he said police did not attend after a criminal activity.
Coster said he had enough resources and police were pursuing gang crime as hard as they ever had.
‘‘We will deal with criminal activity when it happens, and we will deal with them appropriately. That has nothing to do with policing by consent,’’ Coster said.
‘‘Our response to crime is as focused as it has ever been.’’
Bridges said he understood that policing by consent was a long-term concept but it appeared that police had ‘‘changed the game’’ in recent years and consent wouldn’t work with gang members.
Coster said the idea of policing by consent would keep police from ending up at war with communities.
‘‘Let me tell you what policing by consent means. When we look overseas and we see the violent clashes between communities and police – over Covid lockdowns, over Black Lives Matter – that is what it looks like when police lose the consent of their communities,’’ Coster said.
‘‘It has nothing to do with whether we will deal with gangs or gang offences. We have put more pressure on gangs, taken more assets, taken more guns, in the last year, than we have in any time of our history.’’
Bridges and Coster, who both have experience as Crown prosecutors, interrupted each other repeatedly.
Bridges at one point suggested that Coster was softer on gang members than MPs.
Speaking after the select committee, Bridges said Coster
was trying to take a ‘‘nuanced’’ approach to policing that reduced public safety.
Bridges pointed to an exchange over police pursuits, which police have changed their policy on in recent years.
Coster had said police were pursuing people less because there was too much risk to the lives of innocent people, pointing to 62 deaths in police pursuits over the last decade. He defended the policy change as police catching up to good international practice.