WARNING: This story deals with suicide
A major report into unconscious bias among the police has found being Māori increases the chance of being prosecuted by 11% compared with Pākehā.
In addition, Māori made up 42% of people who were tasered during the review period, despite comprising 17.8% of the population.
The three-year study into systemic bias has also found most people tasered by police were mentally distressed or unwell and there were instances of officers wrongly interpreting that person’s behaviour as disobedience rather than an inability to understand instructions.
The panel, chaired by esteemed legal experts Tā (Sir) Kim Workman and Professor Khylee Quince, revealed systemic bias and racial profiling within policing is continuing – partly due to gaps in police training.
The investigation gave researchers for the first time unrestricted access to police systems, complaints, meeting minutes and documents.
Key findings include:
The first tranche of documents, including seven reports, were released today and include 40 wide-ranging recommendations, including stopping the use of police ethnicity data for decision-making, reviewing all incidents where a Taser is deployed on young people or those aged over 60, and increase de-escalation training for police responding to individuals experiencing a mental health crisis.
Quince, who is dean of AUT’s law school, told the Herald police leadership would “absolutely” accept systemic bias and racial profiling occurred, as detailed in the report – but the “big question” was how they would act and “whether or not it would land”.
The panel the review was focused on the systems within policing that could contribute to systemic bias, not individual officers. Findings were sense checked with a group of 30 front-line police officers.
“It’s no secret that as a whole the Māori community doesn’t have high levels of trust and confidence in the police. But what they do want is equity and fairness.”
However, Police Minister Mark Mitchell has denied there is systemic bias in policing. Mitchell had not finished reading the report, but was presented with some of its findings by reporters.
“I’m not denying that Māori are over-represented in our justice system, absolutely they are,” he said.
“What I’m saying to you though is stop pointing the finger and blaming the police... social investment is something that I firmly believe in, we’ve got to get into people’s lives much earlier.”
The study, named Understanding Policing Delivery (UPD), was commissioned by Police Commissioner Andrew Coster in 2020 during a time when police globally faced intense scrutiny following the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Researchers reviewed six months of Taser data, including footage of the events. Of people tasered over this period, 54% involved people experiencing mental distress and who were mentally unwell and/or attempting self-harm or suicide.
The Taser reports indicated a belief among police that those clearly experiencing distress were non-compliant, rather than unwell or unable to follow instruction, the report noted.
In some instances, multiple officers issued commands at the same time, often confusing the person involved. In other instances, footage indicated the person may have had a cognitive or physical disability, but this was not noted by the officer in the report.
“Police appeared to be unwilling to approach individuals they perceived to be unwell, and reported this in the narratives, preferring to maintain distance and deploy a Taser43,” the report noted.
In some instances, urgency to gain control of a situation involving a mentally unwell person appeared to influence decision-making. It appeared discharging a Taser was seen as the quickest and most efficient way of gaining compliance, the report noted.
“Camera footage of events indicated not all police have the skills to appropriately respond, manage or de-escalate a mental health crisis using appropriate humanistic tactics.”
Quince said the proportion of Taser events involving mentally distressed people was “pretty shocking” but police had been saying “for some time” they did not want to be the agency responding to such events.
The panel’s recommendations include establishing a cross-government response to these events from health, welfare and other agencies, rather than police.
Māori are over-represented at every stage of the justice system and the study shows the long-known disparities in the experiences of Māori in policing and the justice system continue today.
Māori were 11% more likely to be prosecuted than Pākehā for the same offence and Māori made 38% of complaints of racism or racial profiling, the highest proportion for an ethnicity. For complaints about the use of force, the report found the level of force described tended to be more serious for Māori and Pacific people.
Although Māori made up 17.8% of the population, they were involved in 42% of Taser discharge events.
Esteemed justice reform advocate and former police officer Tā Kim Workman said up until recently, the history of policing had not been taught at police college – but it is an important history that illustrates why the relationship between Māori and police today may be fraught.
“Most police officers, even senior police officers, had a very sketchy understanding [of that history],” he told the Herald.
“When you start to tell the story, it starts to reveal that Māori were a subject of discriminatory and systemic racism from the very beginning.”
As Workman explained, from 1840s onwards the purpose of the colonial police force was to “subjugate the local indigenous people and mould them to a European way of life”.
“They were granted extraordinary powers to ensure that they did, including legislation which allowed them to assault and suppress Māori.”
Through the 1860s, efforts to subdue Māori resistance to land sales led to the Waikato War and mass arrests, imprisonment and execution often without trial, the report noted.
Other historic instances of police force against Māori include the 1881 constabulary invasion of Parihaka, a community that had campaigned on passive resistance and the 1916 police raid on the Ngāi Tūhoe settlement of Maungapōhatu to arrest prophet and community leader Rua Kēnana.
More recently, reporting by RNZ revealed a widespread practice of police stopping and illegally photographing Māori youth. An investigation was launched and in 2021, police leadership acknowledged police practices could be improved.
The panel found police’s focus was on ensuring photographs could be taken within the law, without considering the effect of police practice on public trust and confidence. Workman described the issue as “unresolved”.
“It’s inevitable when that stuff happens over many years that the level of trust and confidence in the police and the criminal justice system is impacted.”
Police were part of wider system of government agencies that had underserved Māori, including education and health, and as a result, Māori were more likely to live in poverty and be exposed to police intervention in their lives, he said.
“When that happens repeatedly over time, those sorts of issue coalesce into people’s whānau so you have whānau who have low education, have mental health issues or drug and alcohol issues, unemployed, poor housing, and so forth, that it’s inevitable that crime becomes an outcome,” he said.
“When you see that happening over decades, then you start to understand about the level of over-representation of Māori within the system.”
Workman said people valued police kindness and empathy, which was noted in the feedback from people thanking police for their warmth, even though they had done something unlawful.
Workman said Māori, including people who were sceptical of police, had an ultimate “desire to be accepted fully as a New Zealand citizen and be Māori”.
“When they are engaged with in a way which acknowledges that they have the right to be treated with respect and dignity, that they are a human and they have rights, they respond really well to that.”
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster acknowledged there was work to do, but said the sector was on the “right” path and “the momentum would continue.”
“I am very confident in the direction our organisation is heading. We have one of the best police services in the world, there is no doubt about that. We have incredible people doing great work.
“What we have taken from this research are opportunities to keep shaping the way training and [...] our systems position our people to deliver fairness in policing. Not all of the things are within police’s control, so I’m real confident this is on the right path.”
“What we can’t tell from the research, in terms of that remaining gap, is how much is within police’s control and how much isn’t. Things like the high prevalence of mental health crisis demand may be driving some of that discrepancy in way that is beyond police’s control. The path is right.”
Young people in “emotionally heightened and distressed” states were tasered during the report period. All three were Māori males, aged between 14-17. They were aggressive and had threatened police, the report said.
One of the young men had a weapon, was intoxicated and had stolen a car, while another youth was tasered after an order from Oranga Tamariki to remove him from the house he had run away to. He had refused to leave the house and had become “assaultive” toward an officer.
Five children were “laser painted”, meaning the Taser’s laser was shone on their body, before they complied with police instruction. Two of the children had a knife and were threatening police, the youngest, a 10-year-old, was attempting suicide.
During the study, the panel raised “significant concerns” over plans to replace police’s current high-voltage stun gun with the Taser10 model. The old model is being discontinued and the new model does not have a camera.
The panel said the “assurance model” was based around the ability to review footage from in-built Taser cameras. Taser cameras were an “important layer of national assurance”, the report said.
Researchers were given access to complaints filed against police during a three-month period. This included 16 internal complaints (police officers complaining about other officers). Themes that emerged from the complaints included bullying and harassment, sexism, subcultures of police and negative impacts on police work.
In the complaints, officers described feeling harassed, bullied and targeted, which impacted their mental health and wellbeing. Individuals reported they didn’t feel safe at work, and this led to feelings of paranoia and being on edge, the report noted.
Just under a quarter of the feedback received during the reporting period was praise, often where officers were seen to go the extra mile to help people.
This included officers responding to mental health situations, including one instance where “fantastic” officers convinced a woman’s flatmate, who was attempting suicide, to “seek help at the hospital despite the ambulance not helping”.
“They went above and beyond their duty, and I believe they are the reason my roommate is alive.”
SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION – Where to get help:
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.
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