Police bosses accused of neglecting firearms control for years, as Government plans new arms authority

Friday, 19 June 2020

Fifty-one people were killed on March 15, a date that will go down as one of New Zealand's darkest days. How far has the country come one year on?

Stressed staff simply ticking boxes, or not ticking them at all. Tears at the desk as bosses demand a rising pile of applications be pushed through. Frustrated firearm owners suddenly feeling the glare of suspicion.

The firearm control regime has for years been a broken system, police insiders say, and the police executive stands accused of neglecting the system that was supposed to protect against mass shootings – like the March 15 2019 terror attack.

The Government last week tried to draw a line under it all. More than a year from the attack in which an Australian citizen armed with semi-automatic firearms killed 51 people at two Christchurch mosques, the last piece of sweeping firearms law reform was passed, with the promise it would 'stop firearms falling into the wrong hands'.

Senior Sergeant Jeremy Steedman handles an unusable semi-automatic firearm at Papakura Central Police Station, during the Government’s firearms buyback scheme. Police in 2019 were tasked with rounding up the country's semi-automatics, banned after the March 15 terror attack.

The terror attack starkly revealed the deficiencies in New Zealand's firearms control regime. That a military-style semi-automatic rifle could be bought with a standard firearm licence was the most obvious of issues politicians were suddenly motivated to fix.

* Firearms register among second raft of gun law reforms announced by PM

* Police check firearm licence applicants for signs of 'extreme right' after March 15 terror attack

* Military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles to be banned after mass shooting: PM

But according to people who have worked inside the police's arms control operations, it's more than the law that needs fixing.

Last week, Stuff revealed allegations from within police that the March 15 terrorist was not properly vetted when his firearm licence was granted. Police staff are said to have failed to interview a family member, as required, instead relying on interviews of two men who met the terrorist through the internet.

Police Minister Stuart Nash, centre, with Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement and an officer with a bent rifle at a firearms buyback session.

Police sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, say the failure was to be expected after years of mismanagement of the firearms licensing system, which had fallen apart by the time the terrorist applied in 2017.

The police sources who spoke to Stuff detailed a raft of failings, many echoing concerns and accusations publicly aired by the firearms community in recent years.

For years, police headquarters gradually lost control of how each of its districts was handling firearm licensing, as a series of short-term managers cycled through the control office in Wellington.

District commanders in many cases diverted the funds gathered through licence application and renewal fees, the sources said, leaving their arms office staff under-resourced.

Publicly available information shows some busy police districts, in particular Waikato, had to manage thousands of licence applications and renewals each year with a few arms officers and licensing staff on the job.

Police vetting staff, expected to interview the referees of licence applicants and assess any risk of granting a licence, were poorly paid and not reimbursed for costs such as cellphone fees, sources said. In February, the Labour Inspectorate fined police $7000 for paying vetting staffers for each file they completed, not for the hours they worked.

Staff at police headquarters were left fielding basic queries from poorly trained arms officers in the field, and inconsistencies in how the law was applied across the country emerged – some districts were simply ticking boxes, others deciding not to tick boxes at all.

'Everyone felt pressure from all sides. I know the district staff were under heaps of pressure from members of the public, as well as head office,' a source said.

Police Acting Superintendent Mike McIlraith displays an AR-15 during a select committee meeting for a new arms law in 2019.

Police arms staff talk about the stress of dealing with a 'bell curve' of work, as the bulk of the country's 250,000 firearm licences came up for renewal – the result of a 10-year expiry being put on firearm licences after the Aramoana massacre in 1990.

The 'curve' began to peak in 2015, and police staffers were under pressure to keep up with the more than 40,000 applications that flooded in. There were another 44,000 in 2016, and 43,000 in 2017.

The problems came to a head in 2017, the year the terrorist was granted a firearms licence. As district staff struggled with the influx of work, police headquarters embarked on a 'confusing mess of projects' hoped to modernise a paper-heavy licensing system.

The 'Firearms Control' team, which had run since 2015, was renamed twice in 2016, according to a police response to an Official Information Act (OIA) request. The unit became the 'Firearms Administration and Management' project, then the 'Arms Safety and Control' project.

Sources say the safety and control project was working on a solution to the 'bell curve', to centralise the patchy system, and to better allocate funding – all efforts that might have meaningfully fixed problems.

But a shift in direction came after an order from the top. Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement had been put in charge of arms control, and he shut down the safety and control project nine months after it began. Sources said some staff walked out of the meeting in disgust.

He installed Acting Superintendent Mike McIlraith as head of the new 'Arms Act Service Delivery Group'.

McIlraith, in response to an OIA request, said the safety and control project was ended so police could begin work on recommendations made in a 2017 parliamentary select committee report on illegal firearms.

Police's new focus included 'the priority of deepening the relationship with the legitimate firearms community' – this was a ministerial direction from Police Minister Paula Bennett, who had accepted seven of the select committee report's 20 recommendations.

A source told Stuff it appeared police managers began kowtowing to the complaints of the increasingly vocal gun lobby. After meetings with firearm community groups, decisions would be made about changes to police processes, at times without police arms staff being informed or their existing processes properly understood.

There were attempts to create online forms to simplify firearms applications that were poorly executed and faltered, and there appeared an eagerness to shift face-to-face processes to online video calls. This presented issues: How can you confirm the magazine capacity of a firearm over Skype?

There were attempts to standardise processes across the country, met with frustration from a firearms community used to dealing with districts which had operated on their own terms for years.

'The firearms community thought they knew how things were operating and suddenly felt like things were changing because we were trying to standardise practice throughout the country.

'They felt like, 'We've been a good upstanding citizen for however many years and suddenly we're getting all these questions as though we're a suspicious individual or we've done something wrong'.'

The system had broken down at all levels, a source said, and senior staff resigned from the office, frustrated. Another source said the relationship between headquarters and district staff had entirely soured.

Early in 2019, police announced they were restructuring the frontline staff managing firearm applications and the Government changed the law so certain applications could be moved online.

A man adjusts flowers at the entrance of the Masjid Al Noor mosque, a year after 51 people were killed and dozens injured in the worst mass shooting in New Zealand's history.

At the time, McIlraith said 76 firearms administrators in the districts would be replaced by 36 field-based workers, and 47 staff at a central office. The 280 vetting staff, employed on casual contracts, were to be entirely cut.

It would have been a major shake-up, but faded into the background after the March 15 terror attack when the focus shifted to the buyback of semi-automatic firearms that had been banned.

In August 2019, Stuff asked for documents related to the beginning and ending of the various firearms projects, and the number of staff, including contractors, hired for the projects between 2015 and 2019. The OIA requests were denied when police responded in May.

'Given the significant changes to the firearms programme, and the various transitions and restructures …. being able to provide this information is more difficult than initially anticipated. Your request is therefore refused,' McIlraith said in the response.

Throughout the restructures, arms officers and police vetters on the ground were swamped with the influx of applications and renewals. A source told Stuff that in 2017, arms staff in the Dunedin district would call their colleagues at headquarters in tears due to the pressure they were under.

The terrorist, weeks after settling in Dunedin, applied for a firearms licence in September 2017. A source said two referees, a father and son in Cambridge, Waikato, were interviewed by a police vetter, but no next-of-kin referee was interviewed, as required.

The licence was signed off in Dunedin in November 2017. Police have previously denied inappropriate referees were interviewed when considering the terrorist's licence application.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reflects on the last year following the Christchurch mosque shootings. First published in 2020.

'If police had addressed some of the issues with administering the Arms Act years ago, [March 15] could've been avoided. Particularly that 10-year bell curve, because that is like a wave that overwhelms everything, and I don't think that's a coincidence that that was the time when the [terrorist's] licence was issued,' a source said.

Police insiders who spoke to Stuff said vetting staff would ultimately be blamed for the failings, but the problems were systemic and the result of police bosses' neglect.

The police media team has declined interview requests on the handling of the firearms licensing system, and has declined to answer written questions on efforts to tackle a 'bell curve' in licence applications, on the decision to end the safety and control project, and other issues with the system.

A man fires a semi-automatic rifle, that previously would have been able to be purchased with a standard firearms licence.

A written statement, attributed to Deputy Commissioner Mike Clement, said police could not make comment due to the ongoing Royal Commission of Inquiry into the March 15 terror attack.

'Police is committed to a programme of work to ensure our administration of the arms act is fit for purpose. This is based on our own assessment of what we need to do,' the statement read.

POLICE MAY LOSE ARMS CONTROL

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Police Minister Stuart Nash both said last week they retained trust in police's management of the firearm system, as they announced the Government's intention to create an independent arms licensing authority and remove the licensing regime from police's control.

'What we do have to do is maintain our gun registration and licensing system, until such a point as we have the new authority in place – and police are best-placed to do that,' Ardern said.

She said the Government would look to improve police's handling of firearms licensing if it proved to be an issue.

'I would absolutely expect that if the Royal Commission [into March 15] demonstrates that we have issues in those areas that we would seek to improve those while we establish the alternative authority.'

She would not comment on Stuff's reporting of alleged police failures when granting the terrorist's firearms licence, saying it was for the Royal Commission to determine whether there were failures.

On Thursday, the Government passed the second round of firearms law reform into law. Labour had forged a deal with NZ First, who agreed to vote for the bill if it created a new independent firearms authority – something the gun lobby has long called for.

The details are yet to be worked out, and there are plenty of questions to be answered: Which Government department will the authority live within? Will it have its own money and staff, or rely on police vetters?

The future of firearms reform – such as a register of firearms to be created – also remains an open question, as NZ First has signalled it will take its issues with the law to the 2020 election. A change in Government could mark a change in direction.

And whether a new arms authority is needed is disputed. Gun lobby group the Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (Colfo) has supported a separate authority for managing firearms, but rival lobby group Gun Control NZ said the pro-gun lobby only wants an independent agency because it will be ineffective.

“Police have made many mistakes in administering the Arms Act. We all bear the consequences of those errors. But a new agency with no enforcement powers will probably be much worse,' Gun Control NZ's Philippa Yasbek said.

'Police can do a better job, as seen in their handling of the gun buyback.'

A police spokeswoman said police acknowledged the Government's intention to establish a new agency, and they 'will work closely with the police minister to support this'.

'In the meantime, police will continue to administer the Arms Act.'