The Wellington based Police Media Centre will be working normal hours throughout the holiday period, 6am-11pm, seven days a week.
However please be aware that we will be operating with reduced staffing levels on some days.
The Wellington team will be taking all calls and enquiries nationally, including those for the Auckland team, from 5pm Friday 22 December to Wednesday 3 January 9am.
During last year’s holiday period we experienced some of the highest volumes of requests from media since we began operation in May 2016.
While we appreciate that there is always an increased focus on police activity during this quiet news period, we will be prioritising the following kind of events to ensure we are communicating important information to media and the public in a timely way:
• Significant operational responses, major crashes and investigations.
• Public safety issues.
• Concerns about the safety of individuals.
We will proactively communicate and respond to requests about these events, as we normally do.
We will continue to respond to other enquiries when we can. However during periods of high demand the following requests will be a lower priority if we are dealing with more significant events:
• Routine ‘anything happening’ check calls.
• Checks on event publisher job codes.
• Calls about non-injury crashes which are causing no significant disruption.
Please also be aware that while frontline operational staff are working throughout the holiday period, those who deal with requests regarding policy, practice and statistics will be on leave, with many not returning to work until 8 January.
You may also be interested to know that the media centre team can deal with up to 200 media enquiries every day, and have issued around 4000 media releases and alerts this year. They’ve dealt with around 16,000 events over the year, taken over 46,000 phone calls and received 41,000 emails from external addresses.
I would like to say thank you to all the journalists we have worked with over the past year. We highly value our relationship with media and your support, particularly when police are seeking public assistance.
I would also like to say thank you for all your feedback. We are continually learning from your feedback to ensure we provide the best service we can. Please do get in touch with us (directly to me if you wish) if you have any matters you wish to raise. I have visited a number of newsrooms around the country over the last year to talk about the Police Media Centre and answer your questions. It is my intention to continue these visits in 2018.
In the meantime the police media team wishes you all a safe and happy holiday. We look forward to working with you again in 2018.
Grant Ogilvie
National Manager, Media Relations