A Counties Manukau police officer has pleaded guilty to falsifying records of people breaching bail conditions without conducting a physical check, according to the police watchdog.
In May 2019, police notified the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) that it suspected the officer may have been falsifying bail breaches and the number of bail checks he was carrying out.
In January 2019, the officer conducted a bail check on a man who was required to remain at a residential address in Ōtāhuhu.
According to the officer, he knocked on the man’s door but the man did not answer. The officer then went back to his patrol car and recorded the breach in the police application on his mobile phone and wrote it in his police notebook.
The man was arrested for the breach the following day. However, the man denied breaching bail, saying he was home and had spoken to an officer who came to his door.
At the man’s bail hearing, the officer referred to handwritten comments in his notebook as evidence against the man, which the IPCA found to have been deliberately altered to provide evidence of the breach of bail.
“By presenting it as evidence at the hearing, and lying about when he wrote those notes, the officer committed perjury,” IPCA chairperson Kenneth Johnston said.
A few weeks after the man’s bail hearing, a colleague told her supervisor of two instances where she had been working with the officer when he had recorded someone as breaching their bail condition without conducting a physical bail check.
A criminal investigation was commenced and established a concerning pattern of offending in the Counties Manukau West area between July 2018 and March 2019.
“The officer admitted to us that there were more than ten incidents where he recorded a person as breaching bail conditions without actually conducting a physical check to see if they are at the bail address.
“We concluded that the officer wilfully perverted the course of justice and fabricated or attempted to fabricate evidence, when he falsely recorded people as breaching bail conditions,” Johnston said.
As a result, charges were laid in early 2022 and the man pleaded guilty in April 2024.
Police ‘disappointed’ by former officer’s actions
In a statement, Counties Manukau District Commander Superintendent Shanan Gray acknowledged the IPCA’s summary report into the investigation, and said the officer resigned from police after pleading guilty.
“We are disappointed by the former officer’s actions and our investigation established this behaviour was occurring in isolation,” she said.
“Police and the community expect our people to maintain the highest levels of integrity and these actions do not reflect the good intentions surrounding the work our people do every day.”
