The cops, the culture - and the cover-up

Saturday, 15 November 2025

This week’s damning report on how the country’s most senior police officers failed to investigate one of their own has raised alarming questions about how this could have happened. Mike White and Katie Ham investigate the cops, the culture, and the chaos caused by Jevon McSkimming, and whether the police can recover.

There they were, standing so gravely in Parliament on Tuesday night.

Three moai (statues) in dark blue, the uniform of the powerful: Public Service Minister Judith Collins, Police Minister Mark Mitchell, Police Commissioner Richard Chambers.

They were a triumvirate of tristesse.

A small lineup of solemnity, flanked by New Zealand flags.

But there were other things evident among the trio as they announced the shocking findings of the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) investigation into the Jevon McSkimming scandal.

There was disgust, disdain. There was distancing.

In its unprecedented report, the IPCA had taken the gloves off when judging the actions and inaction of the country’s most senior police officers who dealt with their colleague and former deputy police commissioner Jevon McSkimming.

McSkimming’s name has plagued headlines for the last year: First when he was vying for the top job in police.

Then when he was suddenly sent home on “special leave” while an investigation into him was carried out.

Then, just two days before Christmas last year, when the Governor-General signed the letter suspending him.

Then when he resigned, after revelations he repeatedly accessed objectionable material on his police computer and phone, and he later pleaded guilty to possessing images of child exploitation and bestiality.

But the 135-page IPCA report was about something else. And, in many respects, about someone else.

About a woman who’d been in a relationship with McSkimming, who’d then made numerous allegations to numerous people about the senior police officer’s actions.

And about how, over seven years, these had been largely ignored, classified as extreme “rantings” from an unwell person, the vengeful, bitter cries of “a woman scorned”.

“Hell hath no fury…”

The “woman scorned”, as former deputy commissioner Tania Kura described her, has name suppression, but is referred to as Ms Z.

In 2016, when she was 21, she met McSkimming, then 40, at a sporting club where he was an instructor, and they began a sexual affair.

McSkimming helped her get a job with police, and wangled it so she worked from Wellington Police Station, near where he was working, rather than the Police College at Porirua.

The relationship ended around the end of 2017.

Before long, emails from Ms Z, under pseudonyms, began accusing McSkimming of manipulating her into sex, and a range of other impropriety.

McSkimming was forced to admit his affair to his wife. And then to police staff.

The way he described it was that he’d ended the affair because Ms Z was too controlling, and the barrage of emails were her attempt to get him back.

And the way McSkimming described it was the way pretty much everyone else in police accepted it: McSkimming was a rising star, a man of values and leadership. Ms Z was a crank making false accusations, harassing McSkimming and others with wild allegations, shooting down his high-flying career.

They believed good old Jevon with barely a question. They put Ms Z in the spam bin.

And this is what the IPCA was eventually called on to investigate: How police handled the growing knowledge of what Ms Z was alleging, and whether they protected McSkimming, gave him special treatment, cosseted him and covered up for him because of who he was.

And why, instead of investigating McSkimming, they arrested Ms Z for harassing people via email, and declared her allegations “false” without testing them.

The IPCA’s findings are as blunt and brutal as any report the police watchdog has ever produced. Hence the unsmiling stone statues of Collins, Mitchell, and Chambers in the Beehive’s theatrette on Tuesday at 6pm, when they unveiled the IPCA’s findings: The most senior police in the country had failed to do the most basic investigations into extraordinarily serious allegations.

The IPCA’s language was also extraordinary. Disingenuous. Deliberate. Insidious.

And much of it was directed at one man, the man who had been king, former police commissioner Andrew Coster.

From King to casualty

To understand the debacle that Jevon McSkimming became requires going back a decade.

About the same time he began his affair with Ms Z, McSkimming was promoted to be an assistant commissioner. (These officers sit below deputy commissioners, with the police commissioner at the head of the hierarchy.)

His rise from country cop to police elite had been swift: McSkimming went from being a constable in two-cop Murchison to Wellington’s most senior officer within four years.

In 2020, he was made a deputy commissioner by new police commissioner Coster.

And less than three years later, McSkimming became the second most powerful cop in the country, when he was appointed a statutory deputy commissioner (chosen by the government, rather than the commissioner).

Coster, enthused about McSkimming’s ability to lead by example, said his 2IC brought “a positive culture to police that enables our people to perform”.

But in reaching this position, McSkimming leapfrogged someone else who would become integral to the later story - Richard Chambers.

Chambers was an assistant commissioner, and after being passed over for the deputy commissioner’s roles in 2023, in favour of McSkimming and Tania Kura, he went to France to work for Interpol.

A year later, however, after Coster announced he was stepping down early, Chambers returned to vie with McSkimming for Coster’s job.

And at that moment, the clash of cultures in police was clearly brought into the spotlight.

Coster had been Labour’s man, appointed under the Jacinda Ardern regime. He promoted a controversial progressive philosophy of “policing by consent”, and was dubbed “Cuddles” for his perceived softly-softly approach.

The youngest commissioner ever appointed, Coster’s Christian faith completed a comforting image of wholesome honesty.

But many officers believed Coster was more chief executive than leader of troops, divorced from beat cops, happier to swim in Wellington’s political pool.

Chambers, nicknamed Felix after an unfortunate incident between a patrol car and a cat, was perceived as a cop’s cop, someone in touch with the frontline, someone who’d done time on Auckland’s streets, and confronted crime’s realities as a detective.

Meanwhile, McSkimming hadn’t been a detective, and was seen as cut from Coster’s managerial cloth.

But Coster wanted McSkimming to succeed him, according to officers he spoke to and the IPCA report, not Chambers, who was considered too much of an old school cop.

In late 2024, as the race for the commissioner’s job reached its final phase, Coster learnt the IPCA had launched an investigation into Ms Z’s years of complaints about McSkimming.

In an extraordinary move, Coster wrote to IPCA head Kenneth Johnston to “formally express my concern” about the investigation and its potential impact on McSkimming’s job prospects.

He made a number of claims that were incorrect, including that police had tried to support Ms Z, and based his argument primarily on what McSkimming had told him, displaying a surprising lack of knowledge about a case he’d been aware of for more than four years.

Coster claimed the IPCA’s investigation was “unfair” to McSkimming, and there was a need to “clear up this matter” before the new commissioner was chosen.

On October 30, the day McSkimming and Chambers appeared before the panel selecting the new commissioner, Coster stressed the same thing to a meeting of senior police.

He urged speed in any police investigation of McSkimming, with some attendees understanding Coster wanted it completed within a week. (Coster denies this.)

Most alarmingly, he suggested setting up a special team outside the normal process to decide on the best way to investigate Ms Z’s complaints - and that he and deputy commissioner Kura (who has also been heavily criticised by the IPCA for her inaction regarding the McSkimming allegations) should make up this team.

It took the director of police legal services to point out this wasn’t appropriate because of a conflict of interest.

As one attendee told the IPCA: “It was quite clear that [Coster] was very interested in Jevon becoming the next commissioner.”

Another commented to the IPCA: “I was gobsmacked at the idea that he wanted to take some sort of shortcut to a resolution.”

The resulting perception was best summed up by detective inspector Nicky Reeves, who was eventually asked to investigate Ms Z’s complaints: “You can paint all sorts of nice words of this … but to an outsider looking in, and … I mean even me, this looks like a cover-up,” she told the IPCA.

In the IPCA’s report, Coster was also heavily criticised for not disclosing his knowledge of McSkimming’s affair and its fallout during his deputy’s appointment processes, saying this misled officials.

Frequently, Coster’s statements and recollections were rejected by the IPCA in favour of others who were at the same meetings.

Despite Ms Z’s complaints relating to his deputy, and possible future Commissioner, Coster admitted to the IPCA, “I don’t know what she’s alleged.”

Coster continued to vouch for McSkimming being a fit and proper person for his police roles, right to the end of his time as commissioner, and described him as a “victim” in the affair.

He claimed there was little police could do because Ms Z’s allegations were anonymous. But McSkimming had told police who the woman was, and the IPCA noted police “had no difficulty in locating her when they wanted to search her premises and arrest her.”

In the end, Coster didn’t get his wish. Chambers was preferred to McSkimming and got the commissioner’s job.

It was a bullet narrowly missed: A police investigation that began shortly afterwards swiftly discovered the objectionable material McSkimming had been looking at on his phone while at work, leading to his suspension, and subsequent guilty pleas on November 6 this year.

Five days later, on Tuesday evening, the glittering career of his former boss, Coster, also came crashing to a halt with news he had been placed on leave from his job as CEO of the Social Investment Agency, following the IPCA’s report.

It was left to Judith Collins to bang the penultimate nail in Coster’s public service coffin.

When asked whether what occurred under his watch amounted to corruption, she replied:

“If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's not looking good, is it?”

A clash of cultures

The gulf between the Coster and Chambers eras of police leadership is clear when speaking with frontline cops.

Coster was a bureaucrat. Chambers is a cop.

As one senior officer put it: “Chambers has always been seen as a fighter for the front line.

“Andy never did that. He’s an exceedingly intelligent person, but very much a politician, and whilst he did support the front line, I’m not sure he ever really grasped what the front line was about.”

Chambers himself clearly realised the divide between Coster’s style, and his own, and the fact there were two obvious camps at police headquarters.

“I felt Mr Coster had his strengths and he had his weaknesses, and he was certainly very good at the Wellington scene and being the bureaucrat.

“But I'm a policeman. I'm a constable … It's the front line that is the heart and soul of New Zealand police.

“I’ve always said that you can’t lead from a desk and … you need leaders who are out there in the field being visible.

“And my observation was that didn’t really seem to be a priority under the previous regime.”

Coster has repeatedly declined to comment this week.

Gossip and rumour

For the past year, however, ever since Coster quit, there has been an eddy of gossip that McSkimming’s demise, and now the fallout for Coster, Kura and others, had been engineered by Chambers, or his supporters. That somehow, this was a concerted smear campaign by Team Chambers to denigrate his former rivals.

The Post has received anonymous calls to this end, and the rumours gained popularity in political circles, given Coster was considered Labour’s man, who Mark Mitchell wasted little time exhibiting affection for when National took office in October 2023.0

Mitchell, a former cop, was a fan of Chambers, who much better fitted the traditional police officer mode.

Chambers strongly denies any suggestion he schemed to bring McSkimming down.

“There’s certainly no one that I know of that did that, and I hope the people I surround myself with know I wouldn’t support or condone that sort of behaviour in any way.

“That’s not the kind of person I am.”

Police spoken to by The Post say only one person is responsible for McSkimming’s disgrace: McSkimming.

“No one sat there and planted these images on the computer,” one detective says.

“But I think it was so shocking, people were desperate for an alternative explanation. An alternative explanation is that someone set him up, and that’s easier to swallow.”

The fact Chambers wasn’t even interviewed by the IPCA during its investigation suggests his distance from events.

And it’s a distance Chambers is very clear about.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Chambers made a pointed remark about those criticised by the IPCA not being his friends.

And in an interview with The Post this week, Chambers insisted he knew nothing about the McSkimming allegations until two days before he became commissioner in November last year, when he was briefed on them.

“This is one of the things that shocks me. Quite clearly, people did know, and they’ve now been identified. I was never in with that group of people.”

Chambers says there were no executive barbecues, Christmas parties, or after-work hangouts under Coster that he was included in, where he might have heard the gossip others did.

“To be honest, it was quite awkward. I felt like I didn’t belong there a lot of the time … I didn’t fit in.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got great workplace relationships, but I guess I just saw things differently to that group.”

The how and why of it all

But none of this satisfactorily answers the question, how did the extraordinary failings identified by the IPCA occur?

While most people have seized on the IPCA’s findings about who screwed up, and who remained honourable, virtually ignored is the section of its report that tries to explain the causes.

The IPCA immediately points to the prevailing police culture.

“This culture emphasises the importance of hierarchy. It fosters a positive group ethos; promotes a strong sense of collegiality and loyalty to colleagues; rewards those who support the organisation and protect it from external criticism; and thus helps to maintain organisational solidarity.”

The IPCA says while this culture has benefits, it tends “to produce resistance to external criticism, and intolerance and even bullying of those who challenge the status quo internally.”

It could also lead to dysfunctional decision-making; a “Them vs Us” mentality; failure to challenge poor decisions; tolerance of unethical behaviour; and overlooking alternative responses to problems due to pressure to conform or fear of ostracism.

While Police had made significant advances towards a more positive culture, “our findings graphically demonstrate the settings in place to protect and enhance integrity are still not sufficiently robust to enable the public to have confidence that police will do their job ‘without fear or favour’.

“In short, it is evident that leadership culture within police has not been strong enough to inform and encourage the right thinking and assessments around integrity matters.”

At Tuesday’s press conference, Judith Collins interjected to stress it was people that failed during the McSkimming affair, not processes.

It’s a convenient argument in some respects - blaming the bad apples, not the system. Cut out the rot, and away you go again.

Chambers blames “group think”.

“You had senior members of the police involving themselves in a matter that wasn't theirs to get involved in, and they all thought alike, and the reason they thought alike was out of self-interest, rather than putting the needs and rights of a woman who reached out, first.

“We’ve got the policies and procedures in place, but the former senior leadership team elected to depart from those, and now we deal with what we're now dealing with - and that's a real shame.”

Could it happen again?

The McSkimming affair has disquieting echoes of the Louise Nicholas case, where senior police officers were charged with rape.

But Nicholas agrees it’s individuals, not the entire police organisation, who are to blame.

“You’ve got to look at Coster, who had a pre-determined idea of McSkimming becoming the next police commissioner. You don’t cross the commissioner.”

Nicholas says after her ordeal, everyone promised it wouldn’t happen again.

“Every commissioner has said, ‘Not under my watch.’

“And that’s where I’m really impressed by commissioner Chambers, I hear it in his voice that he’s staunch on this. He’s the right man for this task to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but other commissioners are going to come along.

“So could it happen again? Absolutely.”

A detective spoken to by The Post agreed nobody could guarantee the events of the last few years wouldn’t be repeated.

“I’d love to say no, this will never happen again. But I can’t believe it happened at all so recently.”

Meanwhile, frontline cops feel they’re once again the ones copping flak for the mistakes of the upper echelons.

It’s happened before, one detective says: “After the Brad Shipton matter we’d get people saying to us, ‘You’re all just a bunch of rapists.’”

“My big thing is whether any of them are ever going to step up and apologise to us?” says another senior officer.

“Will Jevon? Will he ever apologise to us for what he’s put us through? Or Andy or Tania? We’re under a level of scrutiny we’ve never been under before because of them.”

“I think we all feel like we've been run over by the McSkimming bus again,” says another detective. “And then it's reversed, and come back once more for good measure.”