Senior Constable Barry Shepherd marks 50 years of service in policing. Photo / Supplied
Barry Shepherd has helped at some of the most confronting national and international disasters.
His extensive disaster relief CV includes the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami in Thailand, the 2010 Pike River mine blast, the 2019 Whakaari eruption, Australian bushfires, the 2014 Malaysian Airlines crash, the Christchurch earthquakes and that city’s 2019 mosque shootings.
Yet in 50 years of policing, the senior constable had never been deployed to a landslide – until last month.
Shepherd marked his half-century in the profession on January 28, while he was working on the recovery of the six people who died in the Mauao landslide at Mount Maunganui.
Shepherd is the Taupō community constable, Bay of Plenty police area lead for search and rescue and a member of the national Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team.
But his path there was not inevitable. The farm kid from Reporoa almost traded policing for a career in surveying.
It took a visit from a recruiting sergeant at Reporoa College to put the idea back into his head, and after that, Shepherd said, “there was no going back”.
At 17, he joined the police cadet course, completing an 11-month “in-depth” training programme.
He was stationed in central Auckland on Boxing Day 1977 and sworn in as a police constable later that year when he turned 19, walking the “standard” beat along Queen St and Karangahape Rd.
Two years later, he transferred to Kawerau, then moved to Taupō in 1983, a place he said “felt like home”. He has remained there since.
By 1986, Shepherd had become involved in search and rescue, drawn to the work and the opportunity to specialise. When the national Disaster Victim Identification team was formally established in the early 2000s, he applied and was accepted.
It was the kind of work he described simply as helping people on their “bad days”.
Disaster Victim Identification was “not for everybody”.
There were not many “young people” on the national team, suggesting to him that “perhaps a bit of wisdom” helped people deal with the work’s confronting nature.
He said it was an unusual part of policing to speak fondly about, but the systems, processes and teamwork were what made it work – and “bringing people down to their families is always pretty satisfying”.
Shepherd was the scene phase co-ordinator for the Mauao landslide recovery, which is the first stage of the DVI process and focused on recovery work at the site before victims were taken for formal identification.
Every disaster was unique, and Shepherd said responses were guided by training and preparation, meaning teams were always “ready to go”.
As one of those “in a blue uniform”, he said he still had “the ability to shed a tear” alongside families who had lost loved ones, but he worked by a consistent philosophy: “The emotional ownership of those losses is not mine”.
“It’s not about our egos”, he said.
“This is my profession, this is my speciality, and I am there to do a good job for those grieving families.”
Those “grieving, loving families” were what kept him coming to work each day.
Shepherd said he had seen people respond to tragedy in different ways – some lost control, others shut down, many were simply overwhelmed as they waited for answers.
Professional distance allowed him to do the work. He said it would be “a very different story” if it were one of his own three children.
“Goodness knows how [I’d] react”.
He said he held “great admiration” for the digger drivers at Mauao, who spent nearly two weeks searching for the deceased – a task that was never part of their job description.
“That’s changed those guys forever”.
Shepherd said his “biggest supporter” was his wife, who worked as a nurse. The pair often “bounced off each other” after difficult days.
“We keep each other grounded.”
Some believed it was better to switch off completely from work, but Shepherd said those conversations were part of how he and his wife managed the weight that came with their jobs.
Shepherd said he was often asked what qualities a person needed to become a police officer.
There was no special personality requirement, he said, proven by the 10,000 officers across the country doing the same job.
But he did have three non-negotiables: be prepared to make sacrifices, work shift hours, and learn to write a good report.
Police respond to calls for service “regardless of what the call is”. Missing a family function could be the trade-off for a job that rarely ran to normal hours, Shepherd said.
At a celebration last year marking Shepherd’s 49 years in the job, one of his sons reflected on what the long-service medals his father had received truly represented – “the long nights, the early starts, leaving family behind” that came with earning them.
Beyond the practical realities, Shepherd said a “really important” part of policing was talking to and listening to people, as not every situation was a “law enforcement issue”.
Technology and tools had advanced over time, but Shepherd said the fundamentals of the job had not.
“As a police officer, we need to keep our heads up … look at each other in the eye,” he said.
“The art of communication is not dead.”
Some aspects of policing may have shifted, Shepherd said, with more violence, drug use and greater mental health challenges, but crime itself remained the same.
Crimes were still defined by the New Zealand Crimes Act – legislation that has been in place since 1961.
Shepherd said he had never described policing as his “calling” or his “forever job”, but “ironically”, he had also never left.
He continued to enjoy his work and had never seriously considered resigning or leaving.
There were times he thought he might rather be at the beach, but “the beach will always be there”, he said.
“I love coming to work still.”
Assistant Commissioner Tim Anderson, who until this month was the Bay of Plenty district commander, said Shepherd did not like to talk about “how good he is”.
“I do, because I’m very proud of him.”
He said reaching 50 years in policing was a “phenomenal achievement”, but what stood out was Shepherd’s ongoing commitment to learning and improvement, continuing to show up with “passion, enthusiasm and drive”.
It was “impossible” to quantify the contribution Shepherd had made to policing and to the community, Anderson said, describing him as the “ultimate ambassador for New Zealand Police”.
Anderson had learned an “incredible amount” from Shepherd, well beyond his nationally-recognised expertise in DVI and search and rescue (SAR).
He said Shepherd’s influence extended to motivating people, working closely with communities and investigating serious crime, alongside his specialist roles.
“He applies the same high standards and calm demeanour to any job, whether that’s daily policing in Taupō or working on a major incident with the eyes of the world watching.”
Anderson thanked Shepherd’s wife and adult children for the many times he was away from home for extended periods.
“Even talking about Barry retiring seems a disservice to him”, Anderson said.
“I don’t think words can really express how good he is.”
When Shepherd did decide to step away from the job, Anderson had no doubt he would leave a “massive legacy”.
Annabel Reid is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke’s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.