Firearms Safety Authority executive director Angela Brazier. Photo / RNZ, Anneke Smith
By Sam Sherwood of RNZ
The executive director of the Firearms Safety Authority says she believes she has been “targeted” by police leadership, including the Police Commissioner, and says her reputation is now “shit”.
In an exclusive interview with RNZ, Angela Brazier says she’s “pissed off” with police for not publicly backing her what she has labelled as “unsubstantiated” allegations against her.
She also says the police watchdog’s report into how police handled allegations of sexual offending by former deputy commissioner Jevon McSkimming was “inaccurate” and says she did nothing wrong.
On Monday, RNZ revealed Brazier was retiring after 22 years in the police.
Her decision to retire was brought on by a combination of different things, including how she had been treated by police, Brazier says.
The Government announced in November that a new specialist firearms regulatory agency will be created, replacing the FSA. It will be headed by an independent chief executive appointed by the Governor-General who would report solely to the Firearms Minister.
She said she would not be applying for the new role; “My reputation is shit now”, something she holds police “wholly” responsible for.
“I don’t think I’ve been supported well by police, but I’m a big girl, and, you know, I put up with that for a year. And when I look at what the future holds, you know, my role will be disestablished. And do I want to apply for the statutory officer role when it could mean undoing what I’ve just been three years of my life doing? You know, the answer to that would be no.”
Brazier is not ruling out taking an “employment complaint” against Police.
“I’m not litigious. I could have gone for and, you know, still might do, haven’t ruled it out because I know that I’d have grounds, but I don’t want to have that hanging over me. I just want to get on with my life and enjoy my retirement,” she said.
“Talking to you now is about me ... giving you my perspective on what has happened, and I can categorically tell you that I’ve done nothing wrong. I haven’t, you know, there’s no bullying, there’s no financial mismanagement. I got a good performance review, really good from Tania [Former Deputy Police Commissioner Tania Kura] before she left, she was my supervisor after Jevon was stood down. So you know, it’s just been a whole lot of dust kicked up for no good reason, which has impacted on my health.”
RNZ earlier revealed the identities of some of the senior leaders referred to in the IPCA’s 135-page report. Among them was Ms G, who is Brazier.
The IPCA said Brazier told it she had known McSkimming for about 20 years.
The authority also said that when the Public Service Commission approached her for a reference check on McSkimming in the appointment process for interim commissioner in October last year, she knew McSkimming had an affair, that he was being “harassed” with emails from the woman and that Kura had informed McSkimming that she had to investigate him as part of the police response.
However, Brazier told the PSC she had nothing relevant to disclose. She told the IPCA she did not think her knowledge was relevant to PSC’s question.
“Ms G’s disclosure was inadequate in light of her knowledge at the time,” the IPCA said.
Asked what connection the IPCA report had on her decision to retire, Brazier said “nothing”.
“Other than it’s annoying because the IPCA report is inaccurate and I provided the IPCA with my feedback at the time, and they didn’t correct it, so they had worked on an assumption that I knew more than I did. So that’s my position on it. I’ve done nothing wrong, and yet they’ve interpreted that I hadn’t given an accurate recount of Jevon in my reference checking that the PSC did at the time for the interim commissioner role that Jevon was asked to do.”
Brazier said the PSC rang her and asked a series of questions, including whether there was anything that would prevent McSkimming from doing the job.
“And from my perspective, there was nothing that would prevent him from doing the job, he’d acted as the commissioner on many occasions and therefore was able to do the job …,” she said.
“I didn’t know he was under police investigation. I had Jevon’s perspective; he was my boss.”
Brazier told RNZ she knew McSkimming had an affair with a woman and that he was allegedly being harassed by the woman with emails. She did not know the affair was with a staff member. She says McSkimming had told her “everybody who needed to know, knew”.
“What I knew I knew from Jevon, not from Tania or police. And that was that … Jevon spoke to the then-commissioner Andy Coster … and then Andy spoke to Tania and wanted Ms Z to be assessed by the fixated threat unit.
“And that as part of that process that Tania would need to understand his emails, what the correspondence had been between both sides. Now when I spoke to the IPCA and they asked me ... I used the word investigate, but actually it wasn’t a police investigation. It was as him as the victim, as opposed to the perpetrator. So it was my bad for using the word investigate.”
Brazier maintains that the knowledge of there being an affair was not something she thought worth disclosing to the PSC.
“It was eight years prior and he was pretty open about it, so it didn’t feel to me like it was something that would be held or could be held against him and would prevent him from being able to do the job.
“And that was the main point was, could he do the job? Was there anything that would prevent him from doing the job? So, you know, if you eliminated everybody that’s had an affair, there wouldn’t be very many people left in the public sector … certainly it’s not something that I believe would have prevented him from being able to do the job at that time, with what I knew then.”
She said if she had known more information such as the woman’s age (Ms Z was about 20 years younger than McSkimming when the affair began), and that she had worked at police, then “I probably would have had a different perspective”.
She did not believe McSkimming misled her.
“He just didn’t give me all the facts, but likewise, I didn’t ask either. It’s a personal thing, and he declared that to me at the point when he became my boss. But it wasn’t in a way that was I needed to cover his back. It was, you know, ‘I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes, and I’m not proud of it, but everyone who needs to know knows’.”
Brazier thought the IPCA report was “unfair”.
“It did say there wasn’t corruption or collusion, but actually people were just trying to do their best with the information that they had at the time. But the way that the IPCA report is written is as if everybody were colluding, and that Ms Z was, you know, hard done by in terms of how she was treated and that she wasn’t listened to.
“But actually … that side of the story hasn’t come out as far as I’m aware.”
Asked whether she believed people were too trusting of McSkimming, Brazier said given what was known now she would say yes.
“Everybody can be wise in hindsight ... I’d worked with him for 20 years, so I thought I had a pretty good handle on the kind of guy that he was, but obviously I didn’t, and I wasn’t the only person.”
‘I’ve been pissed off by police’
Brazier’s retirement also followed a “health check” of the police agency following concerns over its workplace culture, including intimate relationships as well as financial practices.
The review came after an “internal employment process” at the firearms regulator which was established following the Christchurch mosque attacks in 2019.
Brazier told RNZ all of the allegations made against her had been ruled unsubstantiated.
“Now I’ve been pissed off by police because they haven’t come out and said that the allegations weren’t upheld, and I believe that they should have done that, because that would have taken the smoke out of it, the heat out of it, right? Because there’s nothing. There’s nothing to see here. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
She said she had asked police to publicly state that the allegations had not been upheld, but police would not, and claimed she was told “that that’s the way they always deal with media issues”.
“They don’t go back after there’s been an investigation and say, ‘Oh, it’s all good. Nothing to see here’. They just don’t do it. So they weren’t going to make an exception for me. Otherwise they’d have to make exceptions for everybody, the same as the health check report, completely clear, nothing, nothing to see there at all.
“But that’s been a year of my life that’s been tied up in various investigations which came to nothing because there was nothing, and then the IPCA report.”
Brazier said she feels she had been treated “very poorly” by police in the last year.
“Because I haven’t been supported. I’ve had, it’s going to be 22 years in March. I’ve never had an employment issue. I’ve never had a complaint, a PG [personal grievance] in 22 years and the other 20 years I worked before that, which wasn’t for police.
“All of this has happened since the change in commissioner. So not an issue, a single issue before that. And then since we’ve got a new commissioner, he’s basically swept the floor. You’ll know all the people who have left, and I’m probably, I’ve been the last one hanging on that was under Coster’s reign and Jevon’s leadership. So it’s just it felt to me like I’ve been targeted.”
Brazier said Chambers’ leadership style was “different than many others”.
“There’s not a values alignment for me.”
Acting Deputy Commissioner Mike Johnson said the IPCA is an independent organisation which has delivered its findings.
“Police will not be responding further.”
In response to questions from RNZ, an IPCA spokesperson said the report “accurately sets out the evidence Ms Brazier provided to us and the conclusions we reached from that evidence”.
– RNZ