Waititi: Own up to racism
Police Association says Māori Party bias allegation ‘lazy’
Police don’t have unconscious racial bias — the bias is more overt and systemic racism permeates the whole criminal justice system, the Māori Party says.
But the Police Association says the party’s claims of systemic racism are lazy and unhelpful, and police were working hard to better understand possible racial bias.
“What is unconscious bias? Is that being biased while asleep? We want the police to admit that they have systemic racism,” Te Pāti Māori coleader Rawiri Waititi said yesterday.
“So the sooner police acknowledge there’s systemic racism in the police, then we can address it.”
The Waiariki MP said 55 per cent of male inmates were Māori, as were 64 per cent of female inmates.
A March Department of Corrections’ prison facts and statistics report said 53.4 per cent of all inmates were Māori.
Waititi said youth justice programmes were also predominantly Māori, and systemic racism was “embedded” in police.
He said systemic racism was prevalent in other criminal justice sectors.
“It’s in everything, it’s in every government agency, and we need to deal with that,” he said.
Waititi said a $562 million Budget allocation over four years to police and Corrections would not help.
“They’re investing in government agencies to continue to feast off the dysfunction that the system has created amongst our people.”
On whether hiring more Māori police would help, he said: “Browning up the police and the jail [staff] is not going to fix the problems”.
The pre-Budget announcement showed more than $185m would be used to expand the police Tactical Response Model.
The model ensured police were trained and equipped to the standard of the Armed Offenders Squad.
“More police, a tactical team, what that means is more dead Māori on the streets,” Waititi said.
Police Association president Chris Cahill said Waititi’s systemic racism claim was “easy” to make but Te Pāti Māori could and should do better.
“They should be looking for holistic solutions across society.”
Police were just one part of the criminal justice system and often functioned as an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, Cahill said.
Broader failures in education, health, the economy or society could not be blamed on police.
“The most disappointing thing for me is if people are going to blame police systemic racism for the overrepresentation of Māori in the justice system, they’re never going to solve the problem.
“I’m not saying there aren’t issues around unconscious bias . . . I’m not saying police aren’t without fault.”
Cahill said police were already working on researching and addressing factors that might lead to bias.
He also said Māori were overrepresented as victims of crime.
Police deployed to help Māori victims were likely to then encounter Māori offenders, if it was a predominantly Māori neighbourhood, he said.
Police had been working with criminal justice advocate and former senior sergeant Sir Kim Workman on research into systemic bias.
But RNZ in March revealed police had split with Waikato University’s Te Puna Haumaru (Institute for Security and Crime Science) over the research.
Police then told RNZ an independent panel overseeing the project would commission the next phases of research.
Police Minister Poto Williams said police had initiated some selfreflective research into unconscious bias.
“So they are owning up to the fact that they want to understand why it is that Māori are stopped, spoken to and arrested by police in more numbers than others,” she said today.
“I applaud the work that police are doing,” she said.