Police minister can’t promise no more lives lost with policing changes
Saturday, 27 July 2024
Tova O’Brien is Stuff’s Chief Political Correspondent and host of the political podcast, Tova. Listen to the latest episode, Money, morale and mobsters, here.
The Police Minister can’t say whether more people will be put at risk or lives lost as a result of police plans to redeploy resources away from mental health and family harm callouts.
Police themselves raised concerns with the minister, telling Mark Mitchell in official advice that there is a risk that, as a result of the changes, police may assess an incident as low-risk and not dispatch a response, but that “subsequently the incident results in a poor safety outcome or even a threat to life”.
Asked whether he could promise that more people would not die as a result of the policing changes, Mitchell told the Tova podcast, “I think it's very unfair for you to ask me to make a promise and assertion that I can have a crystal ball and control everything.”
He said the Government and police are working very hard to make sure they’ve got the best possible response as a country, “we want people to get better support and the right support”.
Police say calls to 111 seeking a response to low-risk situations have risen considerably and it means they are now increasingly responding to non-criminal incidents which would be better dealt with by other agencies.
Analysis released to Stuff under the Official Information Act shows that mental health related demand is likely taking about half a million hours of police frontline time each year.
Police estimate it’s costing as much as $73 million a year and deploying the equivalent of 271 frontline officers.
In their advice to the minister, police also warn that there is a risk that police stepping back will be damaging to trust and confidence if people who expect support can no longer access it.
The minister said the Government is working across different agencies like the Ministry of Social Development, Oranga Tamariki and Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ to ensure people in need are getting the right response.
Challenged on whether those other agencies have capacity to pick up the work, the minister said that’s the challenge they face but that, right now, it’s keeping police away from their core functions.
“Our frontline staff who've got a very specific set of skills and powers that no one else has have been drawn away and taken away from the work that the public expect them to be able to do.”
Despite the prime minister and health minister just sacking the board of Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ and seeking savings of $130m a month, Mitchell insisted there was no conflict in the approaches. He promised the Government would be making a further investment in rebuilding the mental health workforce.
“I don't think there's a mythical unicorn agency [to pick up the slack] but I think that it's time for us as a country to identify where the services lie and who's best to deliver them.”
He said police would still attend attempted suicides or any mental health callouts where there was a risk of harm to a person or a member of the public.
Asked if family harm and domestic violence was our national shame and should be a core function of police, the minister said police will always have a role in domestic violence and where there’s clearly an offence being committed.
“But do we really want to be a country that expects our police to be able to go in there and deal with every domestic situation or, or family harm situation? Absolutely not. There's far better agencies that have been in place to deal with it.”