Frontline police a declining force

By WARREN GAMBLE

Phill Ruddell barely has time to introduce himself before the radio on his hip crackles to life.

It is 6.25pm last Friday, a sunny spring evening in the fenced carpark of the Wiri emergency response centre in Ronwood Ave.

Constable Ruddell is into his second day on the job in South Auckland, part of an operation, Impact Player, to plug the gaps in the district's thin blue line.

The Counties-Manukau police district is 56 sworn staff under-strength, and that is after eight recruits joined this week. Auckland city police district is down by 51.

Down the road from Wiri, the Manurewa station alone has more than 500 files outstanding. In Auckland city, where crime rose by 13 per cent in the year to June, more than 1000 files were left unassigned in August.

The effect is to stretch the existing staff, particularly those with several years of invaluable experience, to breaking point. Some leave the job or the district, putting more pressure on inexperienced officers and leaving gaps that out-of-town officers such as Ruddell are partly filling.

He has been in the force for seven years, five on the North Shore but the past two in the relative calm of Cambridge.

The 33-year-old jumped at the chance to return to the big smoke for five weeks as part of a $1 million, five-month programme to ease the Auckland region's staffing crisis. It was supposed to provide 30 extra officers to Counties and Auckland city, but has rendered only 17 each in the first phase.

For Ruddell the attractions are professional and personal. He is closer to his girlfriend, he gets $80 a day extra pay and "I enjoy the business of it".

The radio underlines his words. Robbery or attempted robbery on at a nearby liquor store, possibly a gun involved.

Ruddell's partner, Constable John McNab, only six weeks out of police college, takes the wheel as Ruddell freely admits his unfamiliarity with the area. Seconds later the patrol car is weaving past commuters on their way home.

Despite the flashing blue and red lights and the siren, a woman with perfectly coiffured hair in a late model car charges from the right at an intersection, narrowly missing our tail.

With other patrols at the scene in Rowandale Ave, Manurewa, the officers are assigned to search adjoining Browns Rd for a suspect. The only description is a male Polynesian wearing a blue bandanna.

Several circuits of Browns Rd later, there is no sign of anyone suspicious apart from another motorist who sails through a red light with the officers watching, unable to do anything while the search continues.

They are stood down after 25 minutes (the robber is later arrested) and head north towards Otara, their patrol destination since their 4pm shift started.

They almost get there before the radio crackles again. Burglars, back in Manurewa. There is a better description: male, late 20s, in red shorts, built like a weightlifter.

The adrenalin surge comes back with the siren and lights, and the sudden respect from motorists who clear the road. One elderly man dawdling in a ute remains oblivious to the wailing and flashing behind him until he looks up and nearly collects a parked car as he swerves violently.

At the scene the weightlifter is nowhere to be seen, but from a neighbour's account and barbells on the porch, it turns out he is an occupant or regular visitor.

McNab, born and bred in South Auckland, is 32. He was a plumber before mates in the force suggested he should apply.

"They told me good things about it ... they lied," he laughs.

"No, it's a great job actually."

McNab relishes policing the Manurewa streets where his family and friends live and does not regard it as a dangerous place.

But it is rarely quiet enough to allow a dinner break. Back at the station, Ruddell gets two mouthfuls of his chicken and salad before the radio calls him to the staple diet of the emergency response team's work - domestic violence.

A woman says her brother-in-law punched her in the face. At the small brick unit in East Tamaki the officers speak to the Vietnamese relatives separately. They have broken, limited English. The woman has no visible injuries but says the man punched her in the jaw and threatened to kill her. A room full of people at the unit say they have not seen anything.

The woman, who has two young children, has nowhere else to go that night. The officers decide to arrest the man, who protests he has done nothing.

They take him to Papakura station where a whiteboard records him as the third MAF - male assaults female - for the evening. It is 8.55.

An hour-and-a-quarter and at least three forms later, they can leave.

"This is the killer part of this job: paperwork," says Ruddell.

"Everyone is keen to go out and lock up bad people, and help people and solve problems, but half of our job is this."

Next day, the woman victim says she does not want to go to court, but the police policy is to press on with the case.

Outside, it's back to Manurewa to investigate a report of a 12-year-old boy shot with an airgun as he played on the footpath with friends.

Surrounded by his Samoan family, the boy shows the officers a small red wound in his back. He and his playmates say they saw a white car parked outside a house down the road, but when Ruddell and McNab knock, no-one comes to the door.

They promise the family they will follow it up the next day (they do, but no-one is home and the file will go into a stack of others pending action).

Into the early hours there is a report of a woman screaming that leads nowhere, and another of disorder on a Mangere street which turns out to be high-spirited teenagers.

Back to the station at 1.30am, they finish paperwork and leave on time at 2am, a rare event. It has been a comparatively quiet night, but with barely a break and without patrolling their original destination, Otara.

McNab says he still feels like "a fish out of water", particularly in adjusting to the demands of shift work and different sleep patterns.

Just after they finish last Saturday, an off-duty Manurewa constable is stabbed in the neck after chasing thieves breaking into a car outside his home. The weapon misses major arteries by a centimetre.

Next day, Ruddell says the incident put him on extra alert, although he says "you never turn off".

"It kind of reinforces in any situation you don't know who you are dealing with."

Inspector Peter Gibson, who heads the Wiri unit, says fortunately it has a reserve section which allows officers to be deployed on other duties, such as extra airport security, for a five-week stint.

Still, turnover is high and the average experience level of the unit is only 5.1 years (compared to 15 in Invercargill).

Gibson is loathe to use the word burnout, but says his officers are dedicated and put in incredible hours.

The five vacancies in the unit have an impact because the inexperienced staff need "wise heads around them and they are difficult to attract".

Unlike other districts which have waiting lists, the perception of Counties-Manukau as a dangerous place to police means there are few applicants.

South Auckland's reputation and the cost of living in Auckland also deter officers with families from moving in.

Gibson says the danger factor is overstated.

"In fact, having our disciplined structure and back-up here, it's probably safer when you are on the edge all the time, you ride the wave a bit better, and staff look after themselves.

"They say you do two years in Manukau and it sets you up to go anywhere, and it probably does."

But when you add the workload to family and financial pressures, the equation may not measure up. The Police Association says those three factors were mentioned by many departing Counties-Manukau staff.

The association vice president, Richard Middleton, who has recently returned to the frontline at the Wiri unit after 16 years in CIB, says one former colleague moved to a provincial city and saved $10,000 a year in housing and living costs.

"He was not stuck in traffic, he did not need to worry about parking, he had lower insurance costs. To a thirtysomething constable on $40,000 a year, that's a lot of money."

Middleton also sees the effects of the workload on inexperienced officers.

The 13 constables on his shift have a combined experience just slightly above his 21 years.

"I see some that get four or five years into the job and they think life is better than this. 'I joined the job to make a difference and have fun in my work, but it's just become robotic policing because of the numbers'."

Middleton says the lack of downtime means little opportunity for proactive, self-initiated policing which officers enjoyed.

"For police officers to look at a situation and think something is not right about this, and end up with an arrest for a series of burglaries, it's a buzz."

As the biggest and most expensive city, Auckland has long had police staffing problems.

The association traces the current historically high shortages to a decision two years ago to defer recruiting wings for a year - after the Government forced police management to prune costs.

The recruitment lag was aggravated by increased numbers of Auckland staff resigning, moving to another district or taking leave without pay.

Recruitment has since been cranked up, the college wings supplemented by an Auckland-targeted trainee programme which takes 17- to 22-year-olds through a pre-college course. The programme's first graduates are expected to be on Auckland streets late next year.

The out-of-town reinforcements will continue until February, and a mission to bring up to 80 British police to Auckland leaves next week.

But the association says the initiatives, while welcome, are still not keeping pace with the numbers leaving Auckland.

For example, the eight new recruits who started in Counties-Manukau this week are offset by a projected 13 officers set to leave this month.

Last week, at its annual conference, the association proposed a one-off bonus of $2500 for officers who remained in their positions in Auckland city and Counties-Manukau until next July.

The money would come from unspent wages because of staff shortages in the two districts.

The Police Commissioner, Rob Robinson, has yet to respond to the proposal but police headquarters poured cold water on it. A statement to the Weekend Herald said "while police are exploring a number of means to ensure appropriate staffing levels are maintained, it does not believe there are strong arguments to support such an allowance or that an allowance is an effective long-term measure to resolve the issue".

Association president Greg O'Connor says he believes the police management are "hoping against hope the recruiting initiatives they have got going will solve the retention problems".

"It is incredibly frustrating that neither the [Police] Minister [George Hawkins] or the commissioner will accept there is an underlying problem that has to be solved."

O'Connor says the assurance from deputy commissioner Steve Long to a select committee last month that the efforts to ease Auckland's staffing problems were "going well" sent a collective groan through the force.

A logical consequence of understaffed and overstretched police is more crime.

Besides the overall crime rate jump, figures released last week showed slower police responses to burglaries - more than 24 hours in Counties-Manukau, more than 16 hours in Auckland city.

Behind those figures are people like Lorraine Rudelj. The Auckland businesswoman had her handbag stolen while at a Viaduct Harbour restaurant on September 14.

She suspected other patrons in the bar who left just before her bag disappeared.

The restaurant kept a credit card receipt from the suspects. Phone messages to the Auckland central and Viaduct stations went unanswered and three officers she met shortly afterward on the beat were offhand and suggested she visit her local station the next day.

On the following Monday someone attempted to cash the $600 cheque from her handbag, and was caught on a bank camera. But Lorraine Rudelj says attempts to get action since led to her being shuffled between stations with each saying the other had the file.

On her third visit to Auckland central she was told the file number she was given no longer exists, and it could be a month before her case was attended to.

After letters of complaint to politicians and the commissioner's office, she got a reply from Auckland district commander Superintendent Howard Broad two weeks ago.

Last week police told her they would visit the restaurant, and the fraud squad had retrieved the video footage from the bank.

In his letter, Mr Broad said she should have reasonably expected to have her complaint recorded, available evidence recovered and the case given a priority screening.

"There are a wide range of factors to be considered including whether there is a need to catch the offender quickly [they might commit more offences, they might be a continuing threat to people or property].

"In many cases, even though we know who the offender is, we may not take immediate action. We simply don't have the capacity to do everything at once.

"We post these people as wanted and wait for them to turn up, then deal with them, as frequently happens. Again this is something that is not usually appreciated, but as I have pointed out, we cut our cloth to deal with circumstances as they arise."

Lorraine Rudelj says she appreciates her case was minor, although she also lost a diamond ring, diamond earrings and credit cards.

"It shows me they just don't have the manpower to deal with it, and just treat this sort of thing as minute."

Back on the streets of South Auckland, Ruddell is gearing up for another busy weekend.

The out-of-district officers have allowed their Wiri colleagues to take long overdue leave, and catch up on paperwork.

Ruddell can see the problems without a full roster, the difficulties responding to jobs in time, the pressures which can lead to misjudgments in the field.

He would hate to see a day "when somebody will come a cropper or get killed because we weren't able to turn up there".

Uniform departure

Dave joined up for the usual reasons: good money, a bit of action, the challenge, a chance to make a difference.

But after three years as a general duties constable in Auckland he left early this year, frustrated, disillusioned, even a little bitter.

He was following a well-worn path. Of the 80 recruits from his police college wing, most of whom came to Auckland, 12 had already left the job after two years.

It was not a single incident which put him off a job he expected to last a lifetime.

He says it was an accumulation of small things, largely stemming from a relentless, repetitive workload shouldered by too few.

Dave - he does not want his real name used because he is starting a new career - soon realised there were not enough police in Auckland city.

Files kept stacking up in his pigeonhole with little chance of action. He might get the occasional three hours on a quiet nightshift for paperwork, but it barely helped scratch the surface.

He recalls one morning when an inspector told his section they had to get their traffic patrol hours up to fulfil a contract with ACC. If not, they faced doing traffic duties on training days.

The inspector added that a budget blowout meant no new equipment for months, and he warned them against any crashes in patrol cars because they could not afford replacements.

Many of the 30-strong fleet had clocked up more than 130,000km, and it was not uncommon to find dents in every panel.

Dave says the daily demands of domestics, drunken fights, vehicle accidents and trips to the city morgue took their toll. All sudden deaths from Northland and Auckland were brought to the Auckland Hospital mortuary where constables had to strip the bodies.

He estimates he visited the mortuary 100 times a year.

In another incident, a drug user, who said he had hepatitis C, flung a blood-covered syringe past his head as they grappled in an inner-city flat.

For a colleague who left to become a sales rep, the final straw was chasing a burglar whose femoral artery was punctured by a police dog. He had to take his shirt off to stem the flow of blood, and found out later the offender had hepatitis C.

Dave accepts such incidents go with the territory in policing, but in Auckland he says the shortages of staff and equipment, the lack of downtime and the difficulty getting leave wore officers down.

"I just had enough."