Police have no idea how many photographs of Māori youth are stored in their intelligence database, but continue to insist officers are not racially profiling them.
Photos of people, crime scenes cars and houses are lumped together in the police database, a senior officer says. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
In March, RNZ revealed police were approaching innocent rangatahi, photographing them, collecting their personal details and sending it all to the police database 'NIA'.
The investigation followed an earlier admission by police that officers had unlawfully photographed multiple young Māori in Wairarapa.
Assistant commissioner for iwi and communities Chris de Wattignar has now told RNZ police can't say how many photos of Māori youth are stored in the database because ascertaining that would require an extraordinary amount of work.
He said that was because when police submit intelligence on youth or 'notings', the attached photographs were not always of a young person.
"We've got photographs of people, we've got photographs of crime scenes, we've got photographs of cars and houses and all sorts of other things," he said.
"We would have to go through every single noting, one by one, to determine if there was … a 'Māori youth' with a photograph attached to them. The next question is, under what circumstances was that photograph taken?"
In March, De Wattignar told RNZ he didn't believe police were racially profiling Māori youth when gathering intelligence because "the database would indicate that's a relatively colour-blind approach".
Last month he told RNZ he would need to rephrase that statement to say looking at the ethnic data from NIA would not be enough to determine whether racial profiling was occurring.
"Something we've done in the past in policing worldwide is just looked at statistics. And you actually need to balance it with what I would call qualitative data, the actual stories, people's real stories, and word of mouth, and almost bundle everything together, which would give you a richer picture of whatever you're looking into.
"I think the experiences of some of the people you've spoken to have clearly felt it was because of their ethnicity. And, again, I don't deny that experience. I'm just not sure that our database would show that racial profiling by ethnicity happens in New Zealand based on that sort of data."
Police learn from Wairarapa cases
Police have acknowledged officers did not obtain informed consent before photographing several young people in Wairarapa. The photographs have since been deleted.
The OnDuty app is used by more than 9000 police officers. Photo: Supplied / smudge.com
De Wattignar said police had learned from a review of the Wairarapa cases.
"What our review has shown us is that we need to be far better at highlighting the importance of informed consent from our young people, especially given they've got special protection given their age and vulnerabilities."
Police, however, have no process to monitor or check whether an officer who has photographed a young person and sent that photograph for storage in NIA has obtained informed consent.
De Wattignar said police relied on officers to know their obligations.
"It's like any policy in the police, we expect our staff to know it, but we have a lot of policy. It's really a case of [knowing] these things are really, really important. We actually need our people to understand the requirements of taking photographs of youth outside of the arrest summons-type situations."
De Wattignar said intelligence gathering was a useful tool to help frontline officers solve crime.
"I can tell you from personal experience as a detective that I had nine armed robberies to investigate at one point. And it was only by digging into the system of intelligence notings that I was able to identify a suspect, who we then interviewed and was found to have been our offender, who was convicted and imprisoned."
De Wattignar said the ongoing challenge was striking a balance between solving crime and ensuring the public, especially young people, maintained trust in police.
"We need to get the trust and confidence in police right with people from a very, very early age, and especially people who have come in from other countries and [may] have a very different experience of police.
"So, it's extremely important to me and it's extremely important to our organisation that we do strike that balance."
The IPCA and Privacy Commissioner are currently running a joint review into the police practice of photographing members of the public.
