{"id":174715,"date":"2025-12-09T03:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T03:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/174715\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T03:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T03:13:08","slug":"former-assistant-police-commissioner-paul-basham-breaks-silence-after-scathing-police-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/174715\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Basham breaks silence after scathing police report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThis statement is being released considering the continued public interest in the IPCA report,\u201d the statement began.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI wish to confirm my commitment to engaging openly and transparently with the ongoing independent employment investigation. To support this, I have appointed Paul Wicks, KC, as my legal counsel and look forward to contributing to that process. Since the investigation is still under way, I will not be making any further comment at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">Basham was referred to in the IPCA\u2019s report as Assistant Commissioner A.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">The IPCA\u2019s report said the terms of reference for Operation Herb, which Basham was \u201cdirectly responsible for\u201d, were \u201cin no way consistent with police adult sexual assault [ASA] policy and procedures\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cHe was unreasonably preoccupied with ensuring Deputy Commissioner McSkimming was not being unfairly disadvantaged in the forthcoming appointments process for the new commissioner, for which he knew Deputy Commissioner McSkimming would be an applicant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">The IPCA said there were several factors that mitigated Basham\u2019s failings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cHe had only come into the role of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/assistant-police-commissioner-paul-basham-retiring-after-40-years-in-police\/AR6S2VZTUJBXXEJIXBW4ZJIDBY\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/nz\/assistant-police-commissioner-paul-basham-retiring-after-40-years-in-police\/AR6S2VZTUJBXXEJIXBW4ZJIDBY\/\">Assistant Commissioner of Investigations<\/a> in April 2024, with limited handover and in the context of the rollout of new gang laws and other high-priority matters. As he puts it, his \u2018head was spinning\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cHe has acknowledged that if presented with the same circumstances again, he would do things differently, including being \u2018unequivocal about the primacy of alignment to ASA policy in the terms of reference\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">Basham retired in September, two months after former Deputy Commissioner Tania Kura.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">RNZ approached Basham for comment following his resignation, on what connection it had with the pending IPCA report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">The police messaged RNZ and said Basham wanted to pass on his retirement was \u201cunrelated to anything other than it was the right time for him and his family. Entirely personal decision\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"WEeFTHfsBFTkKSx\" style=\"display:none\">\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThis statement is being released considering the continued public interest in the IPCA report,\u201d the statement began. \u201cI&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,2731,24040,38501,14903,2740,42,43,17357,675,1560,100842,15768,11165,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-174715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-assistant","tag-basham","tag-breaks","tag-commissioner","tag-former","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-paul","tag-police","tag-report","tag-scathing","tag-sherwood","tag-silence","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}