Sunny Kaushal: Who should be New Zealand’s next Police Commissioner?

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster during an appearance before the Justice Select Committee at Parliament, Wellington on February 15, 2023. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION

Two murders of dairy workers in a decade and close to 100,000 complaints of retail crime in 2022 tells us what we all know. Something has gone disastrously wrong as we await 2023 data.

With Police Commissioner Andrew Coster’s five-year term coming to an end in 2025, thought must turn to his successor. We must be big enough to look beyond the usual police line of succession, and we’d like to throw a British bobbie into the mix. Chief Constable Stephen Watson of Greater Manchester Police turned around a failing police force into arguably Britain’s best in just two years. The secret? Sweating the small stuff. Every crime is to be investigated, no matter how “small”, and police must attend every burglary: that sends a message to the public the police have their back, and to burglars that they won’t get away with it.

This is not radical. It’s what police used to do here, and even in 2017, police got to just under half of all reported retail crimes. No more. In 2022, that had slipped to just a fraction. The message this sends is disastrous. It green-lights minor crime, which grows in magnitude until someone gets killed. Two dairy workers in the last 10 years. I’ve been to too many hospital beds and seen too much blood to stomach this - some of that blood being mine.

“Back to basics” was used by British media to describe Watson’s approach. “Back to basics” is needed here when we see gang affiliates hanging out of utes and vans while police stand by providing traffic control. Surely enforcing dangerous driving laws would at least make gangs obey the road rules? Auckland’s CBD is a crime magnet, yet its police station is in Ponsonby. Homeless people walk into shops and supermarkets and just help themselves. Youths ransack dairies or attack Michael Hill Jeweller because they know the law backwards. Last year, tradies who caught a thief were told to let them go, while the owner of the National Business Review was told the same thing after he nabbed a shoplifter. That’s because our stupid laws make it illegal to make a citizen’s arrest for most crimes before 9pm; the definition of daytime. Changing that empowers shopkeepers, security guards and the public to have a go. They allow this in England and in Australia but not here. That’s got to change.

There’s more because unlike in Australia, where “reasonable force” is defined in law, or in England, where an intruder may be tackled, here, it’s weaker than dishwater. I’m not talking about baseball bats or guns. God, no. When it comes to defending your shop, your farm or your own property from a thief, our incredibly weak “reasonable force” says not to “... strike or do bodily harm to the other person”. Pathetic - a scratch is “bodily harm”. Redefining reasonable force as “not really serious harm” does not green-light violence. It instead empowers security guards at Michael Hill or Woolies, or a dairy owner, to wrestle back what’s stolen without them facing an assault charge.

Widening citizen’s arrests to daylight hours, making reasonable force, well, reasonable, and adding 500 extra police officers will affect a risk-reward calculus criminals consider. Court will no longer be a get-out-of-jail-free card, with time called on Labour’s emptying of the prisons.

More is needed, and that requires the police top brass to copy the pledge Watson gave to the people of Manchester in 2021: To investigate every crime however “minor”; ban the “screening-out” of weak cases; insist that officers attend every burglary - and, get this, old-fashioned “beat policing”. Judging by Minister of Police Mark Mitchell’s recent comments, the policy end is pushing to get back to the basics.

In Manchester, the number of offences resulting in a charge increased 44 per cent. Here, between 2021 and 2022, the reported number of retail crime complaints leapt 44 per cent, but unlike in Manchester, the number of “proceedings” slumped to just 8.85 per cent. In fact, out of 99,000 retail crime complaints received, only 6.47 per cent of offenders ever saw the inside of a courtroom in 2022. A lot more crime but a lot less time.

Government determination needs friends, and that means the brass in Wellington need to start sweating the small stuff, as it’s not small to us victims. With the corner dairy on the bleeding edge of the crime emergency, Manchester’s Chief Constable Watson is my choice for our next Police Commissioner.

Sunny Kaushal is the chairman of the Dairy and Business Owners Group Inc. and president of the Crime Prevention Group.