Lamb is a third-generation police officer whose grandfather and uncle both served in the force. He was born in Nelson and grew up in Bay of Plenty.<\/p>\n
Assistant Commissioner Jeanette Park, Superintendent Joel Lamb, and Commissioner Richard Chambers at the powhiri in Napier. Photo \/ Helen Shea<\/p>\n
He has worked across New Zealand during his 27 years with the police, and even had a five-year stint in Indonesia.<\/p>\n
Most recently, he and his wife lived in Wellington for a year, where he held the role of director of major operations.<\/p>\n
He said his heart was in provincial policing, and he was honoured to take up his first district commander role.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really great to be back in provincial policing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really like the aspect of how close the community and police work together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Increasing recruitment is among his top objectives for the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think one of the key things we need to do is recruiting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a great place to work, but it is a challenge to recruit good people, and we want the very best.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one of my key focuses is making sure we recruit the right people.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said there were vacancies and \u201cwe are down on numbers\u201d at present. He did not have the exact figure of vacancies.<\/p>\n
However, he explained recruitment was a long game, given the process to become a police officer included six months of police college followed by a 2-year probationary period.<\/p>\n
He said across Eastern District, which covers Hawke\u2019s Bay and Tair\u0101whiti, there were about 650 police staff.<\/p>\n
That includes more than 500 sworn police officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team here are doing really good work, and I want to make sure that work continues, and I can bring another perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n
He acknowledged a spike in homicides in the district in recent months, and said prioritising staff was important.<\/p>\n
\u201cDetectives fill a really important role but also, likewise, our ability to stop stuff happening before [it happens] fills an important role.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, there is always that blend of where do we put our weighting?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have our numbers, and we can surge and change, but what we need to do is make sure we get that balance right.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat balance sometimes needs to shift [at a given time].\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamb\u2019s office is at Hastings Police Station, but he plans to base himself across the district.<\/p>\n
He will head north to Tair\u0101whiti within the next couple of weeks, including a visit to storm-stricken Te Araroa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to get up there and make sure I meet the people first hand, so I can understand what they have faced and look at where we can help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lamb said other priorities in the role included engaging well with iwi.<\/p>\n
Growing up, Lamb used to travel to Mahia to surf, and said he loved the East Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lamb is a third-generation police officer whose grandfather and uncle both served in the force. He was born…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3471,95,1561,4282,7557,1958,2082,305,1976,83644,4277,117,111,43,139,69,159719,675,4227,312,30279,51849,223,1849],"class_list":["post-287004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-among","tag-and","tag-bay","tag-boss","tag-district","tag-focus","tag-for","tag-have","tag-hawkes","tag-increasing","tag-key","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-objectives","tag-police","tag-recruitment","tag-says","tag-tairwhiti","tag-tairwhitis","tag-the","tag-welcomed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287004","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=287004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}