Inside Operation Convoy: Behind the investigation into the Parliament occupation

Friday, 22 November 2024

Two and a half years after thousands of people descended onto Parliament grounds as part of an anti-mandate protest, The Post was offered an exclusive look behind the curtain of the ‘meticulous’ police investigation that followed. Katie Ham reports.

For Detective Inspector Paul Berry, the objective was clear from day one ‒ identify and prosecute the most serious offenders from a riot that saw police officers and protesters violently clash on the streets of central Wellington.

On March 2, 2022, a major police operation that aimed to expel hundreds of protesters from the precinct surrounding the Beehive was met with violence of a kind not seen in New Zealand’s recent history.

Weeks of bitter tensions reached a boiling point with rioters forcefully pushing back against police, carving out bricks from the pavement to use as projectiles to launch at officers while flames licked the remnants of ‘Camp Freedom’.

The Post can now reveal the details of months of painstaking work that police embarked on once Parliament grounds had been cleared.

“The Parliament protests will go down in our history books. People still talk about the Springboks tour in ‘81, and the occupation was another watershed moment, both in terms of how the protesters behaved and the impact on the community,” Berry told The Post.

In total, police prosecuted 46 adults and six youths for a host of crimes that took place on March 2, ranging from rioting to arson to assault with a weapon.

Aside from those resolved through youth processes, all either pleaded guilty or were found guilty, marking a 100% success rate for investigators.

“The team did a fantastic job. It was meticulous from beginning to end, and they should be immensely proud,” Berry said.

A battle for Parliament

In the end, it took police less than 24 hours to clear the sprawling anti-mandate encampment that had blockaded Parliament grounds for more than three weeks.

The occupation began on February 6, 2022, with those gathered at Parliament’s doorstep to protest a myriad of things ‒ for some the Covid-19 mask and vaccine mandates, while others were peddling messages of far-right politics and conspiracy theory.

In Berry’s words, the protest was made up of “genuine protesters” and those who “were energised by the thought of a fight”.

“We were really clear from the beginning that some people were there to genuinely protest the Government’s policies. It’s always been our view that people have the right to protest, so long as they don’t hurt people or damage property.

“But by the end there had been a sea change. It stopped being a protest and became a vicious attack of police and Parliament property,” Berry said.

At its peak, estimates placed the number of protesters in the early thousands, but as the days turned to weeks, that number dwindled.

Those who remained, however, were steadfast in their resolve to overcome Parliament. A make-shift community formed, with impromptu security guards patrolling the outskirts of ‘Camp Freedom’.

But all of that changed on the eve of March 2 when hundreds of police officers from out of town descended on Wellington.

At dawn the following day, scores of police officers in full riot gear formed a line and began to move protesters back. But those protesters fought back and a day of violence ensued.

As officers ripped up tents and tore down gazebos, some protesters hurled themselves against police shields while others threw whatever they could get their hands on at officers ‒ plastic furniture, bottles and eventually bricks.

As fires began to pop up across Parliament grounds ‒ captured on video as being lit by the protesters themselves ‒ police were able to move forward, extinguishing hotspots as they went.

Throughout the day officers were seen being dragged from the frontline injured. Seventy police staff were hurt during the clash, with seven requiring hospitalisation, Berry said.

“We actually think that number could have been a lot higher, but lots of officers just took it on the chin, so to speak.

“It was quite the range of injuries, from head injuries to lacerations on officers’ arms and legs. I’m sure you can imagine if a brick is thrown at you with full force, you’ll end up with some pretty serious injuries.”

By sunset the battle for Parliament was over. In a haze of smoke, the protest-turned-occupation at the seat of New Zealand’s government had ended ‒ but Berry’s job was only just beginning.

Establishing ‘Operation Convoy’

During the occupation itself, Berry was Acting Director of National Security and his days largely focused on assessing national security risks and threats to members of the Government.

While Berry can’t speak in detail about what he was doing during that time for security reasons, he distinctly remembers the day police moved occupiers on.

“I was heading home and stopped on Lambton Quay to watch it all. I was standing with members of the public and a former colleague, and we couldn’t believe what we were seeing.

“The officers did a fantastic job under rain of all sorts of weapons. They were really brave,” he said.

In the days that followed, Berry was appointed as the lead investigator for Operation Convoy, established to identify and prosecute anyone who had committed serious crimes on March 2.

Berry began by going down to Parliament grounds to get a sense of the extent of the damage. It wasn’t a traditional crime scene, but was nonetheless essential to establishing quite what investigators were dealing with.

“It’s usually a nice, tranquil place with lovely green lawns and trees but this was just a mess. Honestly, it was a health hazard. You could see that there had been multiple fires, and we collected a few weapons that we thought we would be able to identify the owners of.”

Next, Berry had the formidable task of establishing the investigation’s parameters.

“We were clear from the beginning that our main objective was to hold those who had committed serious offences to account ‒ so that’s arson, fuelling fires, serious assaults against police or anyone else, those sorts of things.

“But the issue was that hundreds of people had done those things, and the courts would have become overwhelmed, so we needed to narrow it down further.”

An “imaginary line” was drawn around the 50 most serious offenders from the riot. Broadly speaking that meant if a person had thrown one brick, they wouldn’t be charged, but if they’d thrown multiple items, they would, Berry said.

“We didn’t want to be vindictive, but we wanted to make sure recidivist offenders were held to account,” he said.

With the objective of the investigation set, Berry had to then determine what resources he would need to successfully find and charge more than four dozen people.

Berry estimated at least 85 people worked on the investigation from the beginning, gathering initial intel and prepping warrants, but the total figure of police staff involved was likely higher with Wellington District relying on other districts to conduct arrests and search warrants.

Due to the nature of the protest, people had come from all over the country, which meant police districts around the motu were pulled into the investigation.

“We had a structure where every police district provided an investigation capability when needed ‒ so if we established a person lived in Napier, for example, the Napier team would help us by locating them and arresting them,” Berry said.

Over time, the number of officers involved shrank to the core investigation team, with about 12 investigators doing the “heavy lifting with prosecution files”, he said.

“So many people were involved, from the high tech team who focused on video analysis, to retired police officers who came back on casual contracts to help watch videos and identify and link offenders across multiple video streams,” he said.

Twelve million megabytes of video footage

In a way, Operation Convoy heralded a new kind of investigation ‒ one where the offenders unwittingly provided police with much of the evidence that was then used against them in court.

“They were documenting a lot of what they were doing and uploading it onto social media in real time, forgetting of course that police can access that too,” Berry said.

When coupled with video footage police seized from Parliament and city council CCTV cameras, security cameras from the university, video taken by media, police body cameras and the Eagle helicopter that evidence became formidable.

“We ended up with 12 terabytes [12 million megabytes] of video footage, which is just a massive amount.”

While the volume of footage was “very, very helpful”, it also risked overwhelming investigators, Berry said.

“We needed to make sure we had the structures in place to manage the sheer volume of footage we were having to review.”

The next stage was, of course, identifying the offenders and arresting them.

“We already knew people had been lighting fires and throwing concrete paving stones at officers, so now we needed to establish who those people were and the amount of footage really helped us with that.”

Through a mixture of internal police mechanisms (sometimes just sending out a mass memo asking if anyone recognised the person in the footage) and media appeals, police were able to take snapshots from the video footage to identify approximately 88 people as in some way an offender.

Police then considered charging 73 of those people, but ultimately decided to proceed with prosecuting 52 people ‒ 46 adults and six youths.

One by one, packages were put together that tracked the movements of all 52 offenders across the course of the day.

But when building an evidential case against a person, you can’t just rely on one photo or video, Berry said. You also have to prove that the person was at Parliament by looking through cell phone usage and banking transactions.

“From that we could build up enough evidence to say we believed X person on the footage was Y person in real life, and a local team would go and execute a search warrant at their house.

“Often they’d be able to find the clothes the person was wearing in the video or something else that tied them to it, and when taken with any admissions we got through interviews, we were able to start building the case for prosecution.”

‘Insurmountable evidence’

The final stage of Operation Convoy was presenting the court with the information in a digestible way. In the first of its kind, investigators designed a digital appendix as part of the summary of facts.

“That meant we could have video clips of the offenders as part of the package ‒ so, for example, if we were charging a person with arson, we could include a short clip of the offender lighting the fire, then you could have them leaving with a petrol can in hand.

“Or the other one we saw a lot of was a person ripping up bricks from the pavement, then a clip of them with their arm in the air, then later throwing that brick. We could show the judge real footage of the action.”

The result was “undeniably impressive”, Berry said. Out of the 46 adults charged in relation to the riot, 44 pleaded guilty and two were found guilty at trial.

Charges ranged from rioting to arson, assault with a weapon, intentional damage, possession of an offensive weapon, assault with intent to injure, assault of a police office doing a lawful duty and doing an indecent act

“The attention to detail given to the identification of the offenders and the evidence gathering meant we ended up with insurmountable evidence. There was no wriggle room.

“A person couldn’t say ‘that wasn’t me’ when we could see them on video committing the crime, we’d found the clothes they were wearing in the video at their house, we had their cell phone traffic that put them in the area and we had a bank transaction that saw them buying things on Lambton Quay that day.”

Over 3200 documents were disclosed for criminal disclosure, 1125 exhibits presented to court and 385 statements taken from police staff and witnesses.

“The sheer size of it all was probably the biggest challenge. The amount of work undertaken was massive.”

While the legacy of the protest will speak for itself, Berry hopes the investigation that followed will be remembered as bringing closure to injured officers and the public.

“One thing we found among the staff who were injured is that there was a sense they’d just go back to work as usual and no one was going to be held to account.

“But ultimately there were people who caused serious harm that day and that’s not what we do in New Zealand, so the investigation team should feel mightily proud of what they were able to achieve in tying off this piece of our history.”

With the final sentencing of a rioter due to take place in February, the end is near for a chapter of New Zealand’s history that many would rather forget.

Operation Convoy by the numbers:

• At least 1000 protesters

• 385 statements taken from police staff and witnesses

• 88 people identified on video as committing serious offences

• 70 injured police officers, seven of which required hospitalisation

• 52 people convicted of serious offences