When police have to be traffic cops

By GREG O'CONNOR*

Before 1992 New Zealanders enjoyed a policing situation unique in the Western world. Road policing was done by traffic officers, part of an identifiably and legally separate organisation from police, who concerned themselves only with protecting the public from crime and disorder.

That situation changed when the National Government merged the organisations and the Ministry of Transport's black-and-white patrol cars disappeared from the nation's roads.

The revelation last week that police in the central North Island are issued with ticket quotas exposed a raw nerve with New Zealanders. They think their police, whom they believe to be among the best in the world, should not be engaging in such unfair practices. They wrongly believe it to be a revenue-gathering exercise.

What underlies the issue is that the police-traffic merger has brought together two contrasting styles of policing accentuated by the different way each branch is funded.

Traffic policing, to be effective in reducing death and injury on the roads, requires a low-discretion, low-tolerance and high-impact approach. There was ample evidence of that in the six years after the merger when police cars virtually disappeared from our highways as the traffic branch was absorbed into the general duties or traditional police areas.

As a result, compliance decreased, average speeds increased and the road toll rose quickly to 800 a year, with a corresponding rise in the number of injuries.

In 1998, the Accident Compensation Commission, the Land Transport Safety Authority and the Ministry of Transport began to demand that police provide auditable evidence that they were doing the traffic policing those organisations were paying them to do.

One way of ensuring that was by counting the number of times police dealt with the public - that is, contacts - and counting the tickets they issued. Police emphasis changed as commanders and managers became accountable for ensuring traffic policing took priority.

In the late 1990s the public first began to understand fully the impact of the merger as the white police cars and their blue-uniformed occupants began to police the roads in a manner previously associated with the Ministry of Transport.

Speed cameras, drink-drive blitzes, warrant-of-fitness checks and a significant increase in tickets issued had the public - who previously only had contact with "their" police as the good guys policing real criminals - crying foul.

The fact that the road toll was reducing significantly as a result was little consolation to many.

General policing has traditionally been about exercise of discretion. No society would function well if all the laws were enforced all the time. All societies train their police to exercise discretion.

Sir Robert Peel's principles of policing were predicated on a social contract whereby police are the public and the public are the police. Such policing requires that officers administer the law with wisdom, discretion and compassion to ensure that the public peace is maintained.

Young police officers quickly learn the hard way that injudicious or overzealous application of the law can quickly make a situation worse, and that using arrest and prosecution as a last and not first resort is the art of good policing.

That was the policing New Zealanders were used to, and this different style of policing being administered by police on the roads was alien. Accentuating the problem was that general-duties police and detectives were increasingly invisible when being sought to investigate burglaries, assaults and other real crime.

That branch of the police was funded from the police budget only, a budget under increasing pressure. Police bosses had no accountability for crime rates, only traffic policing.

The outrage and cynicism among the public after the publication of the alleged quota instruction to police shows they are still coming to grips with the merger. Police have never been as socially isolated from their communities as police officers are in other parts of the world, and have always polled well on the most respected profession surveys.

The fundamental changes to the way police carry out their newly acquired traffic responsibilities are an essential part of reducing road accidents and death. However, the sort of unique public support enjoyed by the New Zealand Police, which so stunned the Rainbow Warrior saboteurs and resulted in their rapid capture, may in future become a casualty of the necessity for police to enforce traffic laws even more stringently to get road deaths below 300 a year, as targeted by the Government.

That will only be achieved by more of the same type of no or extremely low discretionary road policing that so incensed New Zealanders when it was translated into a so-called ticket quota.

New Zealand made a decision in 1992 to structure their police the same as other world police forces by joining traffic and police. It has changed the traditional nature of policing. Ironically, our road policing is now regarded as one of the world's best by other forces in light of the spectacular reductions in accidents.

It is now essential that all policing decisions be made in the broad context of maintaining the balance between doing what is essential to keep all New Zealanders safe on the roads and everywhere else, and retaining the public support necessary to achieve it.

* Greg O'Connor is president of the Police Association.