Police Commissioner Andrew Coster says that New Zealand’s police force will no longer respond to bomb threats, in an attempt to cut costs and redirect police resources to less boring activities.
Coster said that threat response and bomb disposal was a “fairly obvious” area for downsizing, as bomb threats are “never anything”, a “huge waste of time”, and “incredibly tedious for our front line officers.”
“In my tenure as police commissioner, and frankly in the tenure of any police commissioner as far as I understand, not a single bomb threat has ever been followed up with an actual bomb, nor has any allegedly suspicious package detonated. If you think about it, this makes sense. If you want to bomb something, you typically wouldn’t tell anybody. And so hundreds of thousands in resources and countless man hours have been expended shutting down schools, libraries, hospitals, businesses and events, as well as blowing up perfectly functional equipment like printers, toasters and regretfully, the Ohakune carrot.”
Since 2012, New Zealand police have responded to over 200 suspicious packages, and have blown up 62 printers and fax machines, 33 empty boxes, 14 crates of beer, 4 washing machines, and 2 copies of Simon Bridges’ political memoir National Identity.
“I am surprised that’s happened twice, yes,” conceded Coster.
“It doesn’t cost a person anything to make an empty threat, and then we have to deploy countless officers, who end up standing around doing absolutely nothing,” said Coster. “Every officer on the job ends up getting the sense of, ‘well, this meeting could’ve been an email’”
Coster said police would still be open to responding to bomb threats via email.
He said it was “nigh impossible” to determine whether those making the threat actually had a bomb.
“Unfortunately in New Zealand it’s legal to send an email or make a phone call without having a bomb. That’s just the reality of the environment we’re operating in.”
Police Association President Chris Cahill understood the decision, which he said was partly the consequence of central government failing to implement a bomb registry.
“If government had acted on this sooner, and we had legislation that required New Zealanders to register their bombs, Police would be able to sort legitimate threats from the illegitimate ones much more easily,” he said.
Pressed on whether Police would make exceptions to their new policy, Coster said they would only do so if a suspicious package was emitting a “loud, rhythmic ticking sound” or had “a countdown clock”, provided the clock was red.
“Green countdown clocks are likely safe,” he said.
