The Police Commissioner and a sexual violence advocate have condemned the “significant failings” of the handling by senior police of serious complaints made against disgraced former Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming.
Yesterday a scathing IPCA report revealed serious misconduct at the highest levels of police over how they handled the accusations of sexual offending.
The release has caused shockwaves and seen former top cop Andrew Coster go on leave from his position as chief executive of the Social Investment Agency.
The IPCA report slammed senior police for failing to properly investigate the woman’s complaints. McSkimming and the woman had been in a relationship. The woman herself was charged under the Harmful Digital Communications Act – action which was later dropped.
Speaking to Breakfast, Police Commissioner Richard Chambers said he was briefed on the situation with McSkimming “just a couple of days before I started as the police commissioner”.
“Prior to that, I had absolutely no knowledge of the situation at all,” he said.
He said the very thorough IPCA report was “very convincing”.
“Quite frankly, it’s disgraceful. It’s a total lack of leadership and integrity at the highest levels of New Zealand Police. It’s the former executive, and I’m relieved that many of these people have left New Zealand Police.
Richard Chambers told Breakfast the situation was a “total lack of leadership and integrity at the highest levels of the New Zealand Police”. (Source: Breakfast)
“The former leadership of New Zealand Police failed not only their own organisation that they were leading at the time, but the public of New Zealand.”
Chambers said the police had enjoyed “high trust and confidence” from the public, and this incident was a “kick in the guts” for officers doing their jobs on the front lines.
“But I just want to be very clear, this is behaviour of the former New Zealand Police executive, and I’m looking forward to moving forward with a new team.
“So yes, we have some trust to rebuild, but just let’s not detract from the 15,000 men and women of New Zealand police who turn out every day and night and do an incredible job. That is what I’m focused on leading I’m very connected to the front line.”
He reiterated: “This won’t happen under my leadership.”
“I don’t believe it will happen in future commissioners of New Zealand Police. This is a sad and dark day for New Zealand Police when this sort of behaviour gets exposed.”
“What happened here was the senior leadership of New Zealand decided to depart from those processes and take action and do things frankly, that were in self interest and that is not acceptable.”
Sexual violence advocate responds
Sexual violence advocate Louise Nicholas told Breakfast she was saddened and angry about what had happened.
“When I read about what they had done with that particular woman, I thought, ‘where the hell did this come from?’ Because we don’t see that in the work that we do alongside police supporting survivors. I think made me even more angrier.”
She said from what she had seen, officers were normally “absolutely brilliant” supporting survivors of sexual violence.
“My team and I, we work closely with police, and they are just absolutely brilliant with the way that they support the survivor and their whanau going through that whole process. So it was devastating to see that young woman was just used like that. It was wrong.”
Asked if this would discourage other victims of sexual violence from coming forward to police in the future, she urged people not to let what had happened here stop them from coming forward.
“Because McSkimming, [he] ain’t those men and women that do a bloody good job.”
She has seen examples of people within organisations calling out bad behaviour as they did not tolerate what they may have seen.
“They don’t want what the actions of others to define the great work that they do.”