Photo: POOL
A week after a bombshell IPCA report raised allegations of high-level cover-ups and triggered accusations of corruption, the fallout continues to grow, with public trust in our police in the spotlight.
New Zealand has long been considered one of the least corrupt jurisdictions in the world.
But a week ago, a scandal shook that perception.
New Zealand police were thrown into one of the most serious crises of confidence in recent memory, with allegations of corruption and high-level cover-ups involving our top officers, including former Police Commissioner Andrew Coster.
And eight days on, it's still unclear whether promised changes and investigations will be enough to rebuild confidence in an institution which has had its appearance of integrity fundamentally shaken.
"This goes to the fundamental heart of trust, really," Newsroom national affairs editor Sam Sachdeva tells The Detail.
"As a country, can we trust our police, the people who are meant to ensure the law and hold law-breakers to account? If they can't be trusted to follow the law themselves, or [follow] due process, then how can we trust them? So, the stakes couldn't be higher, really."
After a fight by journalists, including the New Zealand Herald's Jared Savage, to lift suppression orders, the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) released a damning report last Tuesday, outlining major leadership failures in the handling of complaints against former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming.
The complaints were from a young woman - referred to as Ms Z - with whom McSkimming had an affair.
The Authority reported that despite allegations of coercive sexual behaviour, threatening conduct, and potential misuse of police systems, early efforts focused on pursuing the complainant under the Harmful Digital Communications Act, while concerns about McSkimming stalled or were minimised.
And top police leaders - including then-commissioner Coster and his deputy commissioner - engaged in serious misconduct in their handling of the case, accepting McSkimming's explanations uncritically and failing to order timely, impartial investigations.
The IPCA findings have triggered public outrage, calls for new investigations, and intense scrutiny of the force's culture and leadership - past and present. The police minister and commissioner have since publicly shown remorse and offered apologies and investigations.
But the woman still faces charges under the digital harassment law for sending "abusive messages" to the detective investigating her, and to his wife. The McSkimming-related charges were withdrawn.
This news was broken by Savage, a senior investigative journalist, who has been working on the scandal for more than a year.
"This big apology was put out to her publicly, everyone - the commissioner, the minister of police - all extending genuine apologies, I think, or heartfelt sympathies for the situation she has been put through ... but she's still facing charges because allegedly she sent some emails to the detective who had arrested her originally for the charges that we now know is misconduct," he tells The Detail.
"Getting answers around this has been difficult, as well, because it's all tied up in the legal process. You go back to the commission and say, 'should she still be charged over this? What is the public interest?' and they say, 'our hands are tied, it's with the Crown now'."
He says the experience has had a "devastating impact" on the young woman, who was allegedly told by McSkimming that if she raised complaints he would distribute photos of her in compromising positions.
"So, you can imagine someone who was very scared to make a formal complaint sends through these emails, which on the face of it look quite abusive and hard to believe, because at this point McSkimming is a shining beacon, he's the number two police officer in the country, clean cut guy. [These are] serious allegations, but police didn't do their job."
Instead, the police backed their own, and charged the complainant.
And all the information was suppressed until last week.
"I think the treatment of her is appalling, to be honest. The police will need to be accountable for that at some point, as well," Savage says.
"To carry on with the second prosecution against her adds insult to injury."
He says the police have a "huge job ahead of them" to rebuild and restore public confidence.
He believes the police involved in the cover-up should be looked into, and a ministerial inquiry should be launched, similar to the Commission of Inquiry led by Dame Margaret Bazley, whose scathing 2007 report described disgraceful conduct by police officers over 25 years, and a wall of silence protecting the men that women complained about.
The high-profile case of Louise Nicholas, who accused four police officers of rape, prompted the Commission of Inquiry to be established in 2004.
"I think this is such a big scandal that there needs to be a similar Commission of Inquiry or Ministerial Inquiry to look into the wider issues that we have got going on here," Savage says.
"Twenty-odd years after the last report, I think it's time to have another good look under the covers, really, because clearly not as much progress has been made as police would like us to believe.
"And again, it comes down to public trust and confidence."
Police, politicians, and the public are now waiting for the next phase of investigations - and for answers about how such significant failures occurred at the very top of the organisation.
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