Merging the traffic service with the police force was a bureaucratic bungle, says Garth George.
As all of us who have had dealings with them can attest that the brains of bureaucrats grind exceeding slow. Which is why it has taken Police Commissioner Howard Broad 3 years of his five-year term to conclude that traffic enforcement should be separated from traditional policing.
In the demented
"reform" era of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the police took over traffic enforcement from the almost universally despised traffic cops section of the old Transport Department, it seemed like a good idea. As did the earlier takeover by the Transport Department of municipal traffic departments, which saw the end of the more despised traffic cops who were employed by cities.
But within a short time it proved to be a serious error of judgment, for nothing has so damaged the public's regard for the New Zealand Police as the decision to turn sworn police officers into radar gun operators and ticket-writers.
Mr Broad told the parliamentary law and order committee last week that he was "quite uncomfortable" with fully sworn police being used for road policing, since they were often just "sitting there with their radar gun".
I suspect he's been uncomfortable for a long time, for I well remember him squirming beside his then political mistress, Annette King, back in 2006 while he tried to explain the difference between "quotas" and "performance targets" imposed on frontline police officers.
Mrs King had called a press conference to deny that police had a quota system for the issue of speeding tickets, yet all it served to do was to drive another nail into the coffin of public respect for the police.
There was a time - most of my life, in fact - when the police were held in higher regard than in almost any other country.
That hasn't been the case for nearly 20 years now, and the decline in the public's esteem for the police dates from its 1992 takeover of traffic enforcement.
But now, at last, the powers-that-be have decided that the two should again be separated, although remain under the umbrella of the police. I have no argument with that, but the separation of traffic enforcement must not just be done - it must be seen to be done.
It will not be sufficient simply to recruit and train "transport enforcement officers", dress them in a police uniforms and assign them a car. It will have to go much further than that if the public is to be persuaded that the new traffic cops are not just ordinary cops in disguise.
In fact, if Mr Broad's latest brainwave is to have any chance of restoring the public's regard for real policemen (and women), then the new transport enforcement officers will need to wear recognisably different uniforms and drive differently painted cars.
The other thing Mr Broad and his personnel people will have to be exceedingly careful about is the type of person they recruit as transport enforcement officers, for it is certain that the job will attract largely the wrong sort of person.
One thing you can be sure of about well-trained and sworn Kiwi cops is that they very, very rarely ever throw their weight about. In fact, some are so polite as to verge on smarmy. But those of us with memories of old-style municipal and Ministry of Transport traffic cops will remember their black uniforms, their swagger, their finger-wagging and, often, their overbearing rudeness.
It is an unfortunate part of human nature that some of us revel in having a little authority over our fellows.
You see it in petty bureaucrats, in local body inspectors of various types and in officious security guards. As someone once said: "Nothing intoxicates some people like a sip of authority."
The other question Mr Broad raised before the committee was the vexed one of armed police. He revealed a proposal to end firearms training for officers unlikely to require it, but increase it for those most likely to find themselves in dangerous situations.
Under the proposal, 40 per cent of Auckland police would not be able to use firearms. They would be trained only in use of the baton and pepper spray. A critical response unit would be established to deal with call-outs.
This seems absurd at a time when more and more criminals are arming themselves. And while most of us abhor the thought of having a visibly armed police force, surely it is time to give all sworn police officers full firearms training rather than the low-level training many receive.
This is also a matter that should receive comprehensive public discussion, but right now I go along with Police Association president Greg O'Connor, who described the new firearms policy as "a recipe for disaster" that would leave the police "out-gunned".
