The intriguing story of the million-dollar traffic cop

He has been dubbed the million-dollar cop. And they say he is the first police officer in New Zealand to write out $1 million in tickets in just one year.

Of course, they say a lot of things about Senior Constable Ross Brown in Gisborne. They call him a few things, too.

You might say there's almost as many names for him or stories about him, as there are tickets.

Mr Brown says you'd be wrong, of course. He'd say there's many more stories than tickets. And while investigating his reputation, the Herald on Sunday heard a few.

In Gisborne, Ross Brown stories are almost the local equivalent of "knock knock" jokes. They are widespread among truckies, who are policed by the Commercial Vehicle Investigation Unit, of which Mr Brown is a member.

Everyone's got a Ross Brown story, and many think they've heard them all. He's heard a few himself and swears there's no truth to them. Not even this one.

One day, Ross Brown (because this is how they start) was checking on how the builder was doing at his house. He went home on his lunch break, talked to the bloke and found the work was good.

As he turned to leave, he told the builder: "Mate, I checked your car on the way through and you haven't got a warrant. I left a ticket under your wipers."

And then one day Ross Brown was waiting for a flight, and it was delayed for an hour. So he went to the inwards goods area and checked out the trucks to see if they complied. He wrote tickets for an hour, then caught his plane.

"Not true," says Mr Brown, in an interview with the Herald on Sunday.

Neither is the builder story. Or that he once ticketed his brother(although his dad was once in traffic in a road checkpoint).

Or this story he offers himself: As Mr Brown tells it, he made a special trip to the local rugby grounds when East Coast was playing in the second division NPC semi-final. While the adoring fans cheered inside, he checked all the cars parked outside the ground for registration and warrants. His brother rang him to ask about it, and found Mr Brown was at home during the match.

Also fiction is the $1m story, relayed to the Herald on Sunday by several truckies. "I don't worry about the money figures. I'm not on a commission. I do not have a quota."

Instead, says Mr Brown, he's lived in Gisborne for 19 years. That alone means he's become one of the most recognisable police officers there. For the past eight years, he's been the Gisborne officer focused on commercial vehicles and road safety, a job he competed for and won.

One day Ross Brown was getting a delivery from Benchmark. The young fella delivering the goods came up the drive and undid the strops. Ross Brown told him: "Take it up the other drive", and the young fella turned around, drove 300m down the road and back on to Ross Brown's land. Up the drive, there was Ross Brown waiting. With a ticket.

"I ticketed him for having an unsafe load?" Mr Brown asks, laughing. "Not true."

What is true is that he has performed police duties while in civilian dress on a day off. Once, he recalls, he tried to get speeding "petrolheads" pulled over before they crashed. He's a little subdued when he talks about how his 1.3 litre personal vehicle, with the kids in it, caught up with the speedster after it was too late. The accident had happened. "You do this job for 19 years and you get an instinct."

There's been a few other times, but not many. As Mr Brown sees it, he's become the fall guy for policing in the district, and people start believing he's everywhere. "One guy saw me mowing lawns in [distant] Ohope," says Mr Brown. When a police officer is seen giving a ticket, the next day it becomes another Ross Brown story.

Like this one. One day Ross Brown went to a club day to check out a cross-country bike ride. When he got there, he parked, then walked around the cars checking for warrant and registration. He ticketed a few, then turned around in the paddock to drive off. On the turn, his car got stuck in a rut. The bikers stood and watched while he struggled to get free.

"No, not true," he says, again.

The reputation is a social cross. "It doesn't help when you go out." But it's okay he says: "My friends know what I'm like." He pauses. "I do have friends."

He's a blue-collar boy, he says. His dad was a butcher and he knows it can be hard to make a dollar. As we talk, it's raining outside and he's clearing paperwork. It's a good time to do it - the weather slows trucks down. And it's warm inside.

Some days he teaches at the local truck driving course at Tairawhiti Polytechnic. The trucking game is getting desperate in Gisborne, where logging firms have slashed margins. "They're cutting each others throats."

There needs to be a little forgiveness when loading a logging truck. It can carry 44 tonne at its heaviest, although there's another 1.5 tonne "tolerance" built into legislation - a legal give and take. "See, I know my stuff," he says.

Now, margins are so tight some logging trucks are being loaded at 45.5 tonne, just to make a dollar from a load. For the driver, there's no way of knowing if the logs were loaded from the dry northern side of a hill, or the sodden, sap-heavy southern side.

An overloaded truck can be dangerous, and certainly damages the road surface.

It's no light business pulling truckies over. Mr Brown understands exactly what it means. "I'm taking money out of people's mouths. I'm not paid to write out tickets. For me, the attitude is road safety."

When it comes to stories, Ross Brown's got a good one about his own traffic ticket, the only ticket he's received. "You know what cops are like," he begins. You can leave $20 out for a week and it'll be fine. But food? Gone if it isn't nailed down.

Ross Brown arrived at work and found the last of his Weetbix had gone, so headed out with a plan to find breakfast. Driving, he spotted a young fella without a helmet riding a bicycle down the footpath and got on the public address system to tell him to get off and walk. "All I was doing was giving him some education," says Mr Brown.

He passed by and turned to check. In front, a car hit its brakes and the truck directly in front of Mr Brown stopped. He hit the truck (his builder, the one who didn't get a ticket). No damage to the builder, $2000 to his car. Ticket for following too closely.

As he says: "If you haven't broken the law, you've got nothing to worry about."

He reckons he's not as tough as it's made out. "Jingos," says one truckie. "He gives 120 per cent. People say he's power crazy. I know it's not true. He's always been that way."

What they say about Ross Brown is that there's no shade of grey. You're right or you're wrong. If you're wrong, you get a ticket. If you're right, you get a warning. There's the law, and there's a ticket.

And when Ross Brown is sleeping, his legend is on patrol.