The next police officer breath-testing you at the roadside could be one of the highest-ranking cops in the country under a new initiative to get senior police back on the front line.
Hundreds of senior cops, including superintendents, inspectors and senior sergeants, are being retrained in the basics so they can get out of the back office and back into the thick of policing.
Under the new Frontline Service Model (FSM) introduced in December, more than 600 senior police must do at least 40 hours of work across various areas of core policing. This applies to sworn staff who work in predominantly office-based roles.
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers earlier made it clear he wanted to ensure all the skills and experience of sworn police staff was fully utilised.
Part of his expectation was that police holding what would traditionally be back-office roles would spend a certain amount of time each year out supporting the front line.
One top cop said he has already been out on the job since the FSM was introduced, calling it “a valuable opportunity to not just engage with the front line, but really listen to the environment and what’s impacting them”.
“You can expect to see all staff of all ranks out and about, being present, being visible. Visible leadership is really important” director of deployment and workforce, Superintendent Iain Chapman said.
He was certain staff were still capable and competent to help out, even if they had been off the front lines for some time.
“What’s great about the job is the elements that we can all learn from. But then at the same time, when you join the police it’s a calling, and you don’t lose those skills,” he said.
The model is expected to contribute more than 25,000 hours of additional support to frontline staff, and has been touted as a substantial investment in community safety and operational resilience.
“Over summer this has included road safety checkpoints, event policing, area canvasses, New Year’s Eve policing and beat patrols, as well as participation in duties at major events such as concerts when there has been a request from District for extra support,” said Chapman.
Senior police have contributed more than 3000 hours of work under the scheme so far, and Chapman said it had been “enthusiastically received” by staff, some of whom have been “wanting to do this for some time”.
The FSM is also hoped to free up core frontline staff, giving them more time to attend both priority and critical events.
Police said the initiative was not about saving time or money. The FSM relates specifically to Level 2 national office sworn staff, which is generally those without ready access to firearms.
Before officers are able to do frontline work, they must undergo compulsory refresher training, which most staff have now completed.
“There’s a day’s worth of first aid training, there’s a day’s worth of physical tactics training. So that’s at one of our training centres around the country where they’ll go along and they will do everything from the hand-to-hand grappling, the safe techniques around handcuffing and the use of pepper spray,” Chapman said.
The most important thing to be refreshed on was de-escalation, and “making sure that when they’re going into these situations they are doing everything they can to de-escalate and getting that confidence back”.
The next few months are being treated as a test, and police will adjust the process as required, but “the commissioner has made really clear, if you’re a sworn member of police, that you are expected to be out and about and doing your bit for a minimum of 40 hours per year,” said Chapman.
He sees it as something police will continue over the following years, as “you may have been sitting in an office job for the last five years, but at your heart you’re still a cop.”
“You still put on the blue uniform every day with pride, and that doesn’t go away.”
Tobias Macintosh is a journalist for Newstalk ZB, based in Wellington.