Police officers rely on technology to be able to do their job, for both desk work and in the field. Photo: 123RF
Police have had to delay introducing vital new technology for handling evidence due to lack of money.
The "major new investment" has been put off, at the same time as the public service spending clampdown has restricted a service "transformation" programme that police earlier said was crucial to avoid "critical service failures".
Officers need better information and digital evidence management tools tools for better crime fighting, internal reports have stated.
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In particular, police need the digital evidence management system to respond to the Privacy Commissioner's demands that they clean up their handling of thousands of unlawfully taken pictures of the public they have held for years.
Such a system is for collecting, storing and using photos, videos and masses of other evidence - police data volumes keep rising by up to 30 percent a year.
"Fiscal constraints have resulted in police deferring a digital evidence management system", they told the Privacy Commissioner.
"The plan to remediate potentially non-compliant images within police's shared drive was scoped and costed.
Police forced to postpone rollout of new technology
"A solution of the size and scale required would require a significant financial investment, which needs to be weighed against other priorities in the current fiscal environment.
"... we remain committed to introducing a digital evidence management system."
The deferral of the digital system was mentioned in a police update to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC), about dealing with tens of thousands of images of the public, mostly rangatahi Māori.
"While implementing a solution is not achievable at this time, police has worked with the OPC and been granted an extension to the timeframe to implement it" to mid-2025, police said.
The OPC said the situation remained that police must get a system in place to ensure that staff do not access or use non-compliant photographs.
"OPC ... have extended the timeline for police to consider how it meets this requirement given the constraints it has identified."
The police officers' union says it does not know what the implications are for the front line. "This project was very much in its infancy and there was little concept of how it might impact on the operating environment of officers," the Police Association said.
"There are other ways police can manage the storage and control of digital evidence."
At the same time, the wider police Reframe transformation programme has also been cut back.
One of Reframe's three objectives was improving evidence gathering and speeding up how it can be used.
It was a response to escalating demand that was threatening "critical service failures" in outdated police systems, papers said.
Four years ago, police asked companies what technology was out there to allow for much easier, more rapid sharing of information from the frontline and with analysts, to underpin "more efficient and effective criminal investigations".
Reframe got $13m last year, but only a time-limited $9m in the 2024 Budget.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster told a justice select committee in February that instead of bringing in new systems, they would rely on "existing systems and processes to streamline" their many activities.
The long-term vision was moving towards "digital case management for all of our activity, including prosecution cases going to the courts", and they had been working on a business case for Budget 2025.
Instead, "recognising the current fiscal environment, we have repositioned that programme [Reframe] more toward near-term benefits," he said.
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When police looked into whether to use bodyworn cameras in 2018-19, their internal report said the cameras "would produce more risk than benefit" without an efficient and effective information management system. They have not gone ahead with bodycams.
The OPC gets reports from police every two months on their progress in complying with directives to delete images and fix its processes.