Police may fast-track detectives
Senior police are considering allowing new recruits to skip the beat and become detectives.
A dedicated detective school is being mooted at police headquarters to help meet the Government-set recruitment goal of 1800 officers within three years.
The possibility could help police recruit the organised crime investigators required by the target, allowing recruits to quickly enter a role which currently asks for five years’ experience.
But a detective fast-track has been met with caution by the Police Association and the National Party.
Police senior leadership have discussed a paper which proposes six options to boost recruitment of detectives. A summary of the document has been provided under the Official Information Act.
‘‘There is a risk that due to the time it takes new staff entering the organisation to complete probationary training, that there may not be enough people eligible to enter the detective training program to fill all the newly allocated positions,’’ the summary reads.
The options include: new recruits entering detective training immediately after graduation; employing investigators from other agencies into a new course; and employing fresh recruits straight through a newly developed course.
Other options considered are the re-employment of ex-detectives, overseas recruitment, and reevaluating incentives which help retain existing staff.
The summary notes overseas recruitment is not favoured.
Conventionally, a police officer will spend the first two years of their career as a constable, after which they can enter into prosecution, forensics, liaison officer roles and road policing. Becoming a detective is a career path advertised as being available to officers with five years’ experience.
Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers, in a written response to the information request, said the paper was ‘‘still part of an open discussion’’ and the options had not been formally evaluated.
Police Association president Chris Cahill said a fast-track to detective training would mean officers miss out learning basic skills, such as conducting an arrest and interviewing people on the street. ‘‘We believe the skills you learn as a front-line police officer determine how good you’ll be going forward — those things flow into the ability to be a detective.’’
It could also limit the pool of detectives available to work on the front-line during emergency situations, such as the Christchurch mosque shootings. The association accepted that ‘‘authorised officers’’, with lesser training and powers, were important for specialist areas such as cyber-crime and asset recovery, but the expansion of this could again limit the pool of front-line capable officers.
National Party police spokesman Brett Hudson said such recruitment could degrade standards and lead to ‘‘weaker prosecutions and more failures’’.
Police Minister Stuart Nash said the Government had employed 1500 new constables since coming into office.