Police hopes high for Auckland training wing

Anna Leask

A new wing of police recruits will start their training on Monday — but they will be doing things a bit differently than usual.

The 20 up-and-coming cops will train exclusively in Auckland, far from the traditional Police College experience in Wellington.

The recruits are a trial wing being run from Tamaki Makaurau in a bid to bolster police numbers in the city and attract recruits who have been held back or put off joining the organisation in the past due to the training being held in Wellington.

Royal New Zealand Police College Inspector Iain Saunders said the pilot came about following direct feedback from potential recruits, whom for many said that moving to Wellington for 16 weeks was a real barrier to joining police — particularly those with young children or family or personal commitments.

“We’re hoping to unlock a group of people who haven’t been available to police before — like people with family commitments for whom four months away from home is a stretch,” he said.

Saunders said Auckland was the biggest and most demanding policing area in the country and it made sense to recruit police from the city who could go straight in and work after training without having to worry about relocating their whole lives and getting to know a place they’ve never lived or worked before.

“It’s an opportunity to look at how we can do things better for the Tamaki Makaurau population,” he said. “We believe having local people will lead to a more stable workforce in Auckland — obviously Auckland is growing fast and we can predict some future demand so we’d like to have some people from Auckland to police Auckland.”

The training programme in Auckland and Wellington will be the same — but the delivery would be slightly different in the north.

Firstly, the training programme will be 19 weeks rather than 16.

Saunders said that was to counter the fact that Auckland recruits were not living on campus and travel to and from training had to be factored in.

They would also learn things in a slightly different order to Wellington.

“It’s the exact same content for things like firearms training, driving and defensive tactics,” Saunders said.

“The difference is that they will get to go to their homes and whanau at the end of each day.”

For the first few weeks the recruits would attend training at Unitec in Mt Albert, with the final weeks of their field training based out of the North Shore Policing Centre in Mairangi Bay. The wing of 20 is made up of all Auckland residents but Saunders said in future it could be opened up to recruits in Northland, Hamilton and the Bay of Plenty so they could train closer to home.

And, there was scope to run wings from other locations — like the South Island.

“Obviously the intent of the trial is to test the concept and make sure the gains we make from it are worth the investment,” Saunders explained.

“It’s just a different approach and if it works well in Auckland there’s no reason it won’t work elsewhere.

“We really want to be able to have workforce diversity and open police up to everyone who is suitable.

“It’s different, it’s new — we’re just trying to prepare for the demand that’s coming in the future”.