Northland's top cop is moving to bolster public confidence in his force in the wake of the sex email scandal and a new poll showing nearly half of the population has little or no confidence in the police.
The officer, Northland police district commander Viv Rickard, blames much of the public's loss of faith on what he describes as a lack of balance in media cover of issues involving the police.
Five thousand sexually explicit images have been found on the police email system and 327 staff around the country are being investigated in relation to the probe.
Thirty officers could face criminal charges.
Twenty Northland police officers, who between them had 312 images, are among those being investigated, including four non-commissioned officers, 14 constables and two non-sworn staff members.
There are about 320 people working for the police in Northland.
The email sex scandal comes at a time when public confidence in the police has dropped.
A NBR-Phillips Fox poll found 53 percent of voting-age people had confidence in police - down 25 percent from three years ago when the same poll recorded 71 percent.
In the new poll, 46 percent said they had little or no confidence in police.
Mr Rickard said the images found on the computers of the Northland staff were generally classified as "inappropriate" rather than the more serious "objectionable" classification.
"I'm personally disappointed in any survey that shows public confidence in the police is dropping.
"We can't do our job without the public and our whole regime relies on public help," he said.
"It's clear that in the last 12 months there had been a significant focus on issues involving the police.
"As a result, we have come under criticism, within Northland and nationally, around some issues."
Mr Rickard said he believed public opinion on the police was driven by the reporting of those issues by the media and he did not believe there had been a lot of balance in those media reports.
Lifting public confidence in the force was a key area for Mr Rickard and he pointed to the "positive" aspects of policing in Northland.
"Crime is going down in Northland and has been for the last three-and-a-half years.
"Fatal crashes (last year) were at their lowest for years and we are solving about half of all crime in Northland," he said.
"So results-wise, we are doing really well.
"We have 320 people in Northland and sometimes we drop the ball and sometimes we get it wrong."
Mr Rickard said the public needed to have high expectations of the police, as did the force itself.
The investigation into the 20 Northland staff is likely to take five to six weeks.
None of the staff has been stood down, but the 18 police officers were facing disciplinary action.
Mr Rickard said the issue was one brought out by police after its internal survey and he challenged other organisations to check that their own computer systems were free of such emails before being too critical of the police.
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