Police Assistant Commissioner Jill Rogers allowed recruits who failed psychometric tests to re-sit the assessment until they passed, according to a source.
Rogers says she doesn’t believe she did allow such exemptions.
“To the best of my recollection, no”, she told the Herald via a police spokeswoman.
An audit of police standards – prompted by a Herald investigation – found exemptions to standards were applied in a number of areas including psychometric testing.
Psychometric tests are used to assess a candidate’s cognitive abilities and personality traits before they’re accepted as a recruit.
The 30-minute multi-choice assessment is used as an indicator of whether an individual will be able to cope with the intellectual demands of police work, and it measures verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning.
That audit found 36 candidates who initially failed the psychometric test were allowed to re-sit the test without the recommended stand-down period.
Best practice stipulates that if a candidate fails, they must wait six months before they try again.
A police spokesperson told the Herald they are looking into whether Rogers did permit exemptions for candidates sitting the psychometric test.
“We are searching available documentation to confirm this,” a police spokeswoman said.
A source told the Herald they believe Rogers did allow failed candidates to re-sit psychometric assessments without observing the six-month stand-down period.
“Rogers did sign off on the use of exemptions to the re-sitting of cognitive tests,” the source told the Herald.
The Herald understands there are concerns among some staff that senior police leaders have shifted blame for a drop in recruit standards to those on the frontline, including staff working in recruitment and at the college.
Accountability should rest with those who made the decisions
The Herald’s source said they wanted to see some accountability from the top.
“The recruitment team has carried a significant burden in delivering outcomes under pressure. Accountability should rest with those who made the decisions, not with staff tasked with executing them,” they said.
The Herald revealed Wednesday Rogers – a frontrunner to be Police Commissioner Richard Chambers’ permanent deputy – allowed at least two candidates who failed fitness standards to start training at police college anyway.
A police spokeswoman said Rogers “can recall two occasions in the last year” where discretion was applied for candidates and police are also searching records to confirm this number.
Rogers downplayed the issue when speaking to reporters about the Herald’s revelations on Thursday.
“Those two examples came to me, and I deemed the circumstances of their recruitment process required an exemption and allowed that,” Rogers said.
She said those who enter police college still go through “robust” training before graduating as constables.
Rogers and Police Commissioner Richard Chambers emphasised that since the results of the preliminary audit were made public, exemptions would no longer be permitted for any candidate.
On Monday, when Chambers was asked who exactly had allowed exemptions to be used in the first place, Chambers said discretion had been applied by “decision makers in recruitment” and “others at police college”.
He denied knowing if anyone in the police executive approved the use of discretionary decisions.
That’s despite Rogers informing him in April that she’d allowed candidates who failed fitness standards to start training at police college.
Chambers was unable to explain why he omitted such information when asked about it Thursday, except to say that he was “not aware we had a couple of people whose circumstances [in asking for exemptions] got to a very more senior level”.
He backed Rogers’ call to let the recruits who failed fitness standards into college.
“Sometimes we have to give some flexibility to their [candidates’] personal circumstances. Now that I understand those which has been since Monday, I totally support the decision [made by Rogers].”
The Herald first revealed in April that candidates who failed the fitness test or Physical Appraisal Test (PAT) were given exemptions to start at police college anyway.
Following questions from the Herald, police announced they would carry out an audit to understand how widespread the issue was.
The preliminary audit confirmed breaches in several areas and found the following breaches.
The Herald has separately revealed that some recruits skipped swimming assessments but graduated anyway.
They were subsequently reordered to take the assessment.
Rogers said on Thursday the public can have confidence in the calibre of new police recruits.
“There are top quality people graduating from the college every single month,” she said.
Revelations of dozens of recruits being allowed to skip key standards across a range of areas has turned into a political blame game, with Police Minister Mark Mitchell, who’s in China, posting on X that the Government is cleaning up a mess left by the Labour Party.
Mitchell’s office told the Herald he’s been given a “verbal briefing” on the full version of the audit which he’s claimed points to failures by Labour.
He said Labour introduced discretion for the police literacy assessment in 2018 as part of its target to recruit an extra 1800 police.
“Labour should be upfront with New Zealanders about the mess they created in order to deliver their well overdue and incomplete 1800 new police target,” he said.
The Herald has been unable to substantiate Mitchell’s claims as the full version of the audit has not yet been made public, and his office was unable to provide the Herald with a copy.
Labour’s police spokesperson Ginny Anderson rejected Mitchell’s claims saying the failures identified happened “entirely under their [National’s] watch.
The audit scrutinised 1022 recruits from 14 wings who went through police college between January 2024 and April 2025, during which time Mitchell has been Police Minister.
“Mark Mitchell should spend less time attacking the opposition and more time delivering on his failed promise of 500 additional police - without cutting corners,” she told the Herald.
The Government set a “priority” target of recruiting 500 extra police officers to bolster frontline numbers by November this year – a target police say is “ambitious”.
Rogers, who is overseeing the push to recruit more staff, denied she’d approved substandard candidates due to political pressure.
Michael Morrah is a senior investigative reporter/team leader at the Herald. He won News Journalist of the Year at the 2025 Voyager Media Awards and has twice been named reporter of the year at the NZ Television Awards. He has been a broadcast journalist for 20 years and joined the Herald‘s video team in July 2024.
One person was taken into custody at the scene.