Bridges v Coster: Top cop in fiery spat with National MP over gang numbers and 'policing by consent'
Thursday, 25 February 2021
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster refused to take several attacks by National MP Simon Bridges lying down when he came to a select committee on Thursday.
The temperature of the exchange, which took place days after Bridges called Coster a “wokester”, got so heated that Bridges asked Coster to treat gang members as firmly as he treated members of parliament.
Bridges, the former leader of the party, earned a reprimand from leader Judith Collins over his attack on Coster earlier this week, when Bridges called Coster a “wokester” with a “softly, softly approach”.
The attack came days before Coster was due to appear before the Justice Select Committee for the agency’s annual review.
**READ MORE:
* National Party MP Simon Bridges lashes out at 'wokester' police commissioner Andy Coster
**
It also came as new gang figures were released by police that indicated a rise in gang numbers – although Coster has said the gang figures shouldn’t be taken at face value, given the list was easy to get on to but hard to exit.
But the most fiery exchange came over the concept of “policing by consent”, with Bridges opening up by asking Coster: “Do the police still arrest people in this country?”
Coster shot back that the idea of policing by consent was not new – in fact going back to the creation of modern policing by Robert Peel in 1829.
“It has never been that police arrest and charge people for every possible crime,” Coster said.
Bridges brought up several incidents from his electorate where he said police did not attend after a criminal activity.
Coster said he had enough resources and police were pursuing gang crime as hard as they ever had.
“We will deal with criminal activity when it happens, and we will deal with them appropriately. That has nothing to do with policing by consent,” Coster said.
“Our response to crime is as focused as it has ever been.”
Bridges said he understood that policing by consent was a long-term concept but it appeared that police had “changed the game” in recent years and consent wouldn’t work with gang-members.
Coster said the idea of policing by consent would keep police from ending up at war with communities.
“Let me tell you what policing by consent means. When we look overseas and we see the violent clashes between communities and police – over Covid-lockdowns, over Black Lives Matter – that is what it looks like when police lose the consent of their communities,” Coster said.
“It has nothing to do with whether we will deal with gangs or gang offences. We have put more pressure on gangs, taken more assets, taken more guns, in the last year, than we have in any time of our history.”
Bridges said that message was tailored for him and in their annual report it was “all the soft stuff, all the nice stuff.”
Bridges and Coster, who both have experience as crown prosecutors, interrupted each other repeatedly
Bridges at one point suggested that Coster treated gang members more softly that he treated MPs.
“I've had two exchanges with you in select committees now, Commissioner. I've found you are capable of being very firm with members. I'm just asking that you be that firm with gang members.”
Part of the spat concerned whether gang numbers – released by police – could be trusted.
Coster told media after the session he would prefer that the numbers not be released, as they were so inaccurate. This was because they added anyone to the gang list if they were seen to be patched, but there was no good mechanism of someone getting off the list without dying. This meant the list would naturally increase.
Bridges repeatedly challenged Coster to “accept” that gang numbers were going up.
Coster replied that he had “no confidence about the total number of gang members” but conceded that “on the fact of it” they were increasing and they had seen a rise in gang activity.
He said police were “uncomfortable” with the fact that 12 gang members held current firearms licenses and it was the police’s belief that even with new law changes simply being a gang member was unlikely to cause a person to fail the fit and proper test for firearms licensing.
Speaking after the select committee, Bridges said Coster was trying to take a “nuanced” approach to policing that lessened public safety.
Bridges pointed to an exchange over police pursuits, which police have changed their policy on in recent years.
Coster had said police were pursuing people less because there was too much risk to the lives of innocent people, pointing to 62 deaths in police pursuits over the last decade. He defended the policy change as police catching up to good international practice.
Bridges said there was no way of knowing the counterfactual of how many violent crimes had been stopped because of police pursuits. He and fellow National MP Simeon Brown were upset about a passage in a police training manual that suggest cops not pursue a fleeing driver with 3kg of meth, something Coster said he would follow up.
Bridges rejected the idea that he had been reprimanded by Collins, saying the only person who could reprimand him was his wife.
“There is only one person who can reprimand me, and her name is Natalie Bridges.”