The Bazley Report: Rotorua area chief promises there will be change

Bruce Horne says most of his team are strongly committed to police values such as professionalism. Photo / Alan Gibson

Inspector Bruce Horne has been Rotorua area commander for three years and a police officer for 27.

He has been appalled by the "rogue behaviour" of a few officers that led to the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct, and made a vow in the wake of the commission's report released on Tuesday.

"There will be change," he promised.

Mr Horne is yet to read the report but plans to look closely at the recommendations. "There's been 60 recommendations. They will involve some degree of change."

The Commission of Inquiry began after claims by Rotorua woman Louise Nicholas that she was raped by police officers there in the mid-1980s.

Mr Horne said he would have no difficulty implementing the report's recommendations in the city, including a recommendation that rules on sexual conduct be imposed on officers.

"Anything that can make it clear to everybody in our organisation and to the public what the expected standards of behaviour are has got to be a good thing."

Although the report did not name offending officers, Mr Horne did not believe anyone implicated was still working at Rotorua, or that the "disgraceful conduct" the report exposed still existed.

"The majority of the team at Rotorua are very strongly committed to our police values and those values include that we will maintain the highest levels of professionalism at all times and recognise the importance of integrity, exercising good judgment and showing respect to people."

He believed the Rotorua public had not lost confidence in police, pointing to protests held in Auckland and Wellington after the recent police sex trials and saying they did not occur in Rotorua.

Nor had Mr Horne witnessed an upsurge of abuse against police since the trials and Commission of Inquiry.

Five police officers in the Bay of Plenty are before the courts on criminal charges, four for allegedly assaulting a man in police cells at Whakatane and the fifth - a senior Rotorua dog handler - facing charges of careless driving, making a false verbal statement and dishonestly using a police vehicle.