How police lost control of firearms
The last piece of sweeping firearms law reform has been passed, with hope it will tighten a regime that was revealed to be starkly lacking after the March 15 terror attack. But police insiders say it’s not just the law that needed fixing. Thomas Manch rep
Stressed staff simply ticking boxes, or not ticking them at all. Tears at the desk as bosses demand a rising pile of applications be pushed through. Frustrated firearm owners suddenly feeling the glare of suspicion.
The firearm control regime has for years been a broken system, police insiders say, and the police executive stands accused of neglecting the system that was supposed to protect against mass shootings – like the March 15, 2019, terror attack.
The Government last week tried to draw a line under it all. More than a year from the attack in which an Australian citizen armed with semi-automatic firearms killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques, the last piece of sweeping firearms law reform was passed, with the promise it would ‘‘stop firearms falling into the wrong hands’’.
The attack starkly revealed the deficiencies in New Zealand’s firearms control regime. That a military-style semi-automatic rifle could be bought with a standard firearms licence was the most obvious of issues politicians were suddenly motivated to fix.
But according to people who have worked inside the police’s arms control operations, it’s more than the law that needs fixing.
Last week, Stuff revealed allegations from within police that the March 15 killer was not properly vetted when his firearms licence was granted. Police staff are said to have failed to interview a family member, as required, instead relying on interviews with two men who met Brenton Tarrant through the internet.
Police sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say the failure was to be expected after years of mismanagement of the firearms licensing system, which had fallen apart by the time the terrorist applied in 2017.
The police sources who spoke to Stuff detailed a raft of failings, many echoing concerns and accusations publicly aired by the firearms community in recent years.
For years, police headquarters gradually lost control of how each of its districts was handling firearm licensing, as a series of managers cycled through the control office in Wellington.
District commanders in many cases diverted the funds gathered through licence application and renewal fees, the sources said, leaving their arms office staff under-resourced.
Publicly available information shows some busy police districts, in particular Waikato, had to manage thousands of licence applications and renewals each year with a few arms officers and licensing staff.
Police vetting staff, expected to interview the referees of licence applicants and assess any risk of granting a licence, were poorly paid and not reimbursed for costs such as cellphone fees, sources said. In February, the Labour Inspectorate fined police $7000 for paying vetting staffers for each file they completed, not for the hours they worked.
Staff at police headquarters were left fielding basic queries from poorly trained arms officers, and inconsistencies in how the law was applied across the country emerged.
‘‘Everyone felt pressure from all sides. I know the district staff were under heaps of pressure from members of the public, as well as head office,’’ a source said.
Police arms staff talk about the stress of dealing with a ‘‘bell curve’’ of work, as the bulk of the country’s 250,000 licences came up for renewal – the result of a 10-year expiry being put on licences as a result of the Aramoana massacre in 1990.
The ‘‘curve’’ began to peak in 2015, and police staffers were under pressure to keep up with the more than 40,000 applications that flooded in. There were another 44,000 in 2016, and 43,000 in 2017.
The problems came to a head in 2017, the year the terrorist was granted a licence. As district staff struggled with the influx of work, police headquarters embarked on a ‘‘confusing mess of projects’’, hoping to modernise a paper-heavy licensing system.
The Firearms Control team, which had run since 2015, was renamed twice in 2016, according to a response to an Official Information Act (OIA) request. The unit became the Firearms Administration and Management project, then the Arms Safety and Control project.
Sources say the safety and control project was working on a solution to the ‘‘bell curve’’, to centralise the patchy system, and to better allocate funding – all efforts that might have meaningfully fixed problems.
But a shift in direction came after an order from the top. Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement had been put in charge of arms control, and he shut down the safety and control project nine months after it began. Sources said some staff walked out of the meeting in disgust.
He installed Acting Superintendent Mike McIlraith as head of the new Arms Act Service Delivery Group. McIlraith, in response to an OIA request, said the safety and control project ended so police could begin work on recommendations made in a 2017 parliamentary select committee report on illegal firearms.
Police’s new focus included ‘‘the priority of deepening the relationship with the legitimate firearms community’’ – a ministerial direction from Police Minister Paula Bennett.
A source told Stuff it appeared police managers began kowtowing to the complaints of the increasingly vocal gun lobby. After meetings with firearm community groups, decisions would be made about changes to police processes, at times without arms staff being informed or their existing processes properly understood.
There were attempts to create online forms to simplify firearms applications that were poorly executed and there appeared an eagerness to shift face-to-face processes to online video calls. This presented issues: How can you confirm the magazine capacity of a firearm over Skype?
‘‘The firearms community thought they knew how things were operating and suddenly felt like things were changing because we were trying to standardise practice throughout the country,’’ the source said.
‘‘They felt like, ‘We’ve been a good upstanding citizen for however many years and suddenly we’re getting all these questions as though we’re a suspicious individual or we’ve done something wrong’.’’
The system had broken down at all levels, a source said, and senior staff resigned from the office, frustrated.
Early in 2019, police announced they were restructuring the frontline staff managing firearm applications and the Government changed the law so certain applications could be moved online.
At the time, McIlraith said 76
firearms administrators in the districts would be replaced by 36 field-based workers, and 47 staff at a central office. The 280 vetting staff, employed on casual contracts, were to be entirely cut.
It would have been a major shake-up, but faded into the background after the terror attack when the focus shifted to the buyback of semi-automatic firearms that had been banned.
In August 2019, Stuff asked for documents related to the the various firearms projects, and the number of staff, including contractors, hired for the projects between 2015 and 2019. The OIA requests were denied when police responded in May.
Throughout the restructures, arms officers and police vetters on the ground were swamped with the influx of applications and renewals. A source told Stuff that, in 2017, arms staff in the Dunedin district would call their colleagues at headquarters in tears due to the pressure they were under.
The terrorist, weeks after settling in Dunedin, applied for a firearms licence in September 2017. A source said two referees, a father and son in Cambridge, Waikato, were interviewed by a police vetter, but no next-of-kin referee was interviewed, as required.
The licence was signed off in Dunedin in November 2017. Police have previously denied inappropriate referees were interviewed when considering the application.
‘‘If police had addressed some of the issues with administering the Arms Act years ago, [March 15] could’ve been avoided. Particularly that 10-year bell curve, because that is like a wave that overwhelms everything, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence that that was the time when the [terrorist’s] licence was issued,’’ a source said.
Police insiders who spoke to Stuff said vetting staff would ultimately be blamed for the failings, but the problems were systemic and the result of police bosses’ neglect.
The police media team has declined interview requests or to answer questions on the handling of the licensing system.
A written statement, attributed to Clement, said police could not make comment due to the royal commission of inquiry into the March 15 attack.
‘‘Police is committed to a programme of work to ensure our administration of the arms act is fit for purpose. This is based on our own assessment of what we need to do,’’ it said.
Police may lose arms control
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Police Minister Stuart Nash said last week they retained trust in police management of the firearms system, as they announced the Government’s intention to create an independent arms licensing authority, removing the work from police control.
‘‘What we do have to do is maintain our gun registration and licensing system, until such a point as we have the new authority in place – and police are best-placed to do that,’’ Ardern said.
She said the Government would look to improve police’s handling of firearms licensing if it proved to be an issue.
‘‘I would absolutely expect that if the royal commission [into March 15] demonstrates that we have issues in those areas that we would seek to improve those while we establish the alternative authority.’’
She would not comment on Stuff’s reporting of alleged police failures when granting the terrorist’s firearms licence, saying it was for the royal commission to determine whether there were failures.
On Thursday, the Government passed the second round of firearms law reform into law. Labour had forged a deal with NZ First, who agreed to vote for the bill if it created a new independent firearms authority – something the gun lobby has long called for.
Plenty of questions remain: Which Government department will the authority live within? Will it have its own money and staff, or rely on police vetters?
The future of firearms reform – such as creating a register of firearms – also remains an open question, as NZ First has signalled it will take its issues with the law to the 2020 election.
And whether a new arms authority is needed is disputed. The Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (Colfo) has supported a separate authority for managing firearms, but rival lobby group Gun Control NZ said the pro-gun lobby only wants an independent agency because it will be ineffective.
‘‘Police have made many mistakes in administering the Arms Act. We all bear the consequences of those errors. But a new agency with no enforcement powers will probably be much worse,’’ Gun Control NZ’s Philippa Yasbek said.
A police spokeswoman said police ‘‘will work closely with the police minister’’ to support the establishment of the new agency.
‘‘In the meantime, police will continue to administer the Arms Act.’’