New Zealand Police Annual Report
for the year ended 30 June 2006
Presented to the House of Representatives pursuant to section 44
(1) of the Public Finance Act 1989.
ISSN: 1176-2497
Commissioner’s overview
Introduction
The 2005/06 financial year was a highly productive one for
New Zealand Police and focused our efforts on reducing crime
and crashes as well as improving community safety. Work commenced
in early 2006 on setting our strategic direction for the next few
years and a new Strategic Plan will be released in
September/October 2006.
Operational Activities
This year brought its usual operational challenges. The year
included many high profile homicides where extensive investigations
resulted in arrests.
The continued improvement in road policing performance has
contributed to substantially reduced road fatalities and injuries
from crashes throughout the country. For the financial year ended
30 June 2006, the road toll was 362 compared with 451 last
year.
The recorded crime rates downward trend of the last decade
appeared to be coming to an end in the year to 30 June 2006. It is
too early to say what factors may be behind a rise in some
categories of recorded crime other than to acknowledge that greater
Police proactivity combined with victim willingness to report crime
are undoubted contributors.
Police are working to bring increased pressure to bear on
organised crime. There have been several large organised crime
rings broken and a significant amount of methamphetamine was
seized.
Significant progress has been made on implementing the 61
recommendations contained in the Independent Review Panel Report
(IRP) on Police’s Communications Centres.
Performance has improved as a result with an increase in service
levels at the same time as an increase in 111 call volume.
The IRP Report also recommended that Police investigate the
feasibility of a single non emergency number to take the
pressure off the 111 system. A project team began work on this in
January 2006 and a demonstration to test the concept will begin in
November 2006. Based in the Northern Communications Centre, the
demonstration will handle non emergency calls made from the
Auckland City and Bay of Plenty Police districts. Once the
demonstration has been tested for several months, a decision will
be made on scaling up to a national service.
National Security and Regional Policing
National security and regional policing activities continued to
be an important focus for Police during the year, with a continuing
emphasis on developing our capacity and capability relating to
national security through interaction with internal and external
partners. The major exercise programme has received a boost with
the training of Police district staff (and staff from Defence,
Immigration and Customs) in exercise development and management by
staff from the Australian Attorney General’s office.
Demand for our police and the New Zealand style of policing
in the Pacific and beyond continues to grow. Offshore deployments
in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville were supplemented by a
small but highly effective contribution to building civilian police
capability in the Bamyan Province of Afghanistan. Valuable
experience was gained from our involvement in Operation Phuket
which was established in response to the December 2004 Tsunami.
This deployment ended in February 2006.
New Legislation
At the request of Government, a two year Police-led project
commenced in March 2006 to review the legislative basis for
policing in New Zealand.
The Police Act 1958 and Police Regulations 1992 are being
revamped to reflect the challenges of modern-day policing and
better position Police for the future.
The review will take into account a range of themes including
community engagement and police powers through to conduct and
integrity and management of human resources.
The aim is to see a draft Police Bill prepared for consultation
in the latter half of 2007.
Organisational Developments
The year was significant in terms of the Government’s
commitment to fund 1,000 additional sworn Police and 250 non-sworn
staff over the next three years. This is enabling Police to plan
with certainty in terms of the resources needed to fill rising
demands for service.
This financial year, 626 new sworn staff graduated from the
Royal New Zealand Police College, the highest number over the
last five years. This included 96 members recruited direct from
overseas. The year ended with sworn staffing numbers (excluding
recruits) totalling 7,577, two over the target number set. In
addition as at 30 June 2006 there were 186 recruits undergoing
training. This means that there has been an overall increase of 235
sworn police officers in the service over the last 12 months. There
are also 218 more non-sworn members. Non-sworn staff numbers at
30 June totalled 2,564 giving a grand total of 10,327 Police
staff.
Due to historically low unemployment rates, many large employers
are experiencing difficulties in growing their labour force. It is
to our credit that Police have not only maintained staffing levels
after attrition, but have grown the number of sworn staff over 3%
since 2004/05. Police is also pleased with the continued low sworn
attrition rate which was again below 5% in this financial year. The
overall recruiting and training performance for the past few years
reinforces that we are quite capable of recruiting the extra
numbers Government has funded in future years.
We have made minor changes to physical requirements for recruits
in line with the realities of a modern police service. This will
provide more incentive for fit and committed people to become
police officers which will increase the pool of available talent
and therefore competition for places in Police. The introduction of
age related run times, bring Police requirements into line with
other modern Police agencies. Police standards of physical
competency still remain high compared to other agencies both in
New Zealand and overseas.
The Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct continued hearing
evidence during the past financial year. A Police team provided
specific responses to individual complaints made to the Commission
and also called evidence on general issues from 40 witnesses. These
witnesses were drawn from throughout the Police organisation and
from external sources.
Police was able to provide the Commission with evidence
summarising Police practices, processes, policies and the unique
challenges posed by policing in New Zealand.
The Commission finished hearing evidence on 16 December
2005 and retired to prepare its report which is due on
30 September 2006.
During the course of our interactions with the Commission of
Inquiry we established a need for an improved process for dealing
with corporate instruments. As a result the Corporate Instruments
Review Project was established. This project will implement and
improve methodology and management process, where necessary, for
the ongoing development, rationalisation and promulgation of all
Police corporate instruments by which the organisation provides
information needed to perform its mission and meet strategic
outcomes.
Conclusion
At the financial year’s end I was just over two months
into my five year term as Commissioner. It is a privilege to lead
the organisation at this time. It is necessary to acknowledge the
stresses and strains of modernising an organisation so closely held
by the public. This inevitably results in a periodic need to align
police standards with commonly expressed community expectations.
There needs to be opportunity to “own it, deal with it, learn
from it and move on”.
Now we are in much better shape to go forward in the development
of a policing service we can all rightly be proud. I celebrate the
achievements of the Police team over the last year and look forward
to working with them, our stakeholders and the public of
New Zealand in the building of safer communities.
Howard Broad
Commissioner of Police
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Table of contents
Commissioner?s overview
Outcome Report
Police's 3 - 5 Year Outcome Priorities
Police Outcome: Reduce Violence
Police Outcome: Reduce Burglary
Police Outcome: Reduce Vehicle Crime
Police Outcome: Reduce Organised Criminal Activity
Police Outcome: Increase National Security
Police Outcome: Enhance Road Safety
Reducing Inequalities
Overview
Key Intervention: Responsiveness to At-Risk Families
Key Intervention: Drugs and Alcohol
Key Intervention: Responsiveness to Young People
Key Intervention: M?i Responsiveness
Key Intervention: Pacific Peoples Responsiveness
Key Intervention: Ethnic Responsiveness
Organisational Development
Service Management
Integrity
Capability
Organisational Performance
Resource Deployment
Management of Key Risks
Statement of objectives and service Performance
Statement of Responsibility
Output Expense One - Policy Advice and Ministerial Servicing
Output Expense Two - General Crime Prevention Services
Output Expense Three - Specific Crime Prevention Services and Maintenance of Public Order
Output Expense Four - Police Primary Response Management
Output Expense Five - Investigations
Output Expense Six - Case Resolution and
Support to Judicial Process
Output Expense Seven - Road Safety Programme
Financial statements
Additional Financial Information
Information Required by statute
Organisational Information
Statistical Information
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