August 24, 2025 • 14 mins
Rob Lemoto, the former host of Police Ten 7, initially left the force to pursue other areas - but he's returned to the field sooner than expected.
He was ready to take on new challenges, but he's since revealed he missed his role within the police and he's been back for a few weeks.
He joined the Afternoons team to discuss further.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk z'd be
follow this and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Rob le Mootto joins us on the phone right now. Rob,
good afternoon to you, and thank you so much for
joining us.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah, good afternoon things. Thanks for having me. It's all right.
I did ten seven while I was in the police.
I kind of kind of surprised a lot of people
as well, because I'd host the show. Then I'll turn
up at a job and some would say you're really
in the police, not point to a taser and say,
well that's a realer. So did ten years, mate, and
then took a took a year off to try some
(00:47):
other things before coming back. So yea, I've been back
for a few weeks now and loving it, loving it fantastic.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So you know this talk in this report that's come
out today, as you know, the recruits on their first
day not knowing certain things. What was your first day
on the job, Like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I didn't read the report, but I've certainly heard that
it's come out. My first thing the job was incredible.
I was sitting at my desk about three or four
hours and looking at my watch and I was actually
thinking I don't have enough time left at work instead
of you know, it's time to go seeing So I
was pretty young, I was pretty naive. I didn't really
know what I was getting myself into. And college college
(01:24):
actually set me up really well. I was on one
sixty six again at the college with some really good people.
I was the youngest, so I actually did a bit
of growing while I was there, and then came out
to some work with some really good people, so very lucky,
very very energized. I got a little bit disappointed. It's
some of what I saw because I think, I think
my mum and did a pretty good job of sheltering
(01:45):
us from some of the real realities of some of
some of the areas of the community that aren't the greatest,
you know. So yeah, I think I think when I
hit the ground, there's a bit of an eye out.
Nuh But no, Look, I really enjoyed it, really enjoyed it.
Didn't take it for granted, and and then obviously as
it progressed, I found other areas where I could help,
(02:05):
so sitting estics of the job. Just loved, absolutely loved
the working in our undefender squad. Really loved my deployment overseas,
working in a couple of communities when in Bogainville up
and Top in New Guinea, it was pretty awesome. So
we're pretty lucky, pretty lucky.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Here, Hasson, did you what was your first arrest? Did
you execute your first first?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The rest was someone who stole a peck at a
churn gun, So yeah, I don't know, I don't notice
the kids know what cashes or sense are, but I
think it had cost twenty five cents and they were
a receidivius offender. I know it's a bit embarrassing when
when you look back, but the tolerance for that sort
of behavior was pretty low, and you had to repeat offenders.
(02:48):
And this person had been wanted and had done a
few things. So my senior offsider was a few days
out of college. He had told me that it wasn't
really the value of the atom, of the fact that
this person wasn't changing their behavior. So they came through,
and of course I think I was the arresting officer
because he didn't want to put his name on the
charge sheet, so my name went on me, you know,
(03:09):
and you kind of realize that some lawyers picked it
up and looked at the charge and everything else. But
we know that it was for the totality of their behavior,
not just one incident. But anyway, yeah, you're not the greatest.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
How quickly did you know? How soon from you know,
getting out there and on the front line, did you
experience something that you thought, this is beyond my training,
this is quite extreme.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Oh yeah, Look to be fair, and you know, no
one likes to admit their age, but I do remember
my first few days in the job because they were
just you know, you have this level of excitement and
you see things and you do things. So I mean
my first day I was overwhelmed because we had paperwork
to do and I was sold on the thought of
(03:53):
just chasing bad people and brand new holdings. You know,
I couldn't afford to holding back then, so at work.
But my offside I still remember him. He runs the
station in the coast and he'd say, slow down, young fellow,
slow down, young fellow. You know, like I want to
get there, and we're going to a family harm incident.
There was a lot of yelling and screaming, and getting
(04:13):
there was exciting, but getting out and dealing with it,
I certainly learned it's not. It wasn't what I thought
it was. But you know what, we ended up helping
some people out of a pretty horrible situation. So you
kind of learned to enjoy certain aspects of it, which
keeps you coming back. You know.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So you say, you know, slow downs, fellow, slow down,
young fellow. How important are the senior officers in terms
of making good recruits and two good police officers?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Oh, it's like anywhere, mate. So I went to a
factory to you know, get rid of a little bit
of enthusiasm and mature a little bit. I went to
a recruiting office, was like, you're not old enough. And
then I went and work in a factory for a
few months and I learned, yeah, look, and even in
the factory there's some senior people who were sort of like,
we don't do it that way. We do it this way.
(04:58):
So I think in an industry, you go and learn
as you go. I think I just think that, you know,
in the police, as soon as you leave college, you're
a role model. Whether you want to be or not,
you're a role model. We've got a uniform. More than
people look to you for help. So I look at
some of our sporting teams made you would have seen
in the past. We have these people and sports teams
who have let us down and anyone sees their role models,
(05:19):
well they're not really. They're good at what they do
and some clubs are better than others. That a sort
of getting these these young people ready for what lies ahead.
And I think at college made they've got the hardest
job in the world because you couldn't have someone there
for two years and they could come out and still
not be ready for what they encounter, you know. So
it is about having good people around them, and it
(05:39):
is about when you leave college understanding that the public
expect excellence from the start. They don't age or lack
of experience means nothing if you get it wrong. And
I feel sorry for our teams who are doing this
in front of the cameras. I mean, it's ironic that
I was on the camera give them. But when I
left Police College, I started when we didn't have cell things.
(06:00):
You wanted to ring someone, we had the dial tone
and you really hope that they didn't have a zero
were a nine because it was by the time he died,
it took for you to get back for the next number.
So it was like, it's just yeah, I mean, the
world out there now people see it. And also we
have so many things that are taken out of context,
Like they'll put something up and they'll say, look, the
police have terroorized these people, and it's fourteen seconds, you know,
(06:24):
But our team have put up with stuff for five, six,
seven minutes before they even before they've even reacted, you know.
So she's a hard world for the front line, and
I do feel for our teams. But we've got some
good people out there, and I actually have no issues
with reports that come out, had no issues with people
ringing up like your station and telling us where we're
getting it right, where we're getting it wrong, because we
(06:46):
only learn from what we do. And like I said,
I'm lucky I came out at a time where being
recorded and being posted, and we get posted by a
lot of bad people. They come out and they post,
and then they cut and they mix and they put
it up and they shape our teams and doing all
these horrible things. But I don't know a colleague that
I've come to work with it comes to work to
make it a bad day for another family, you know.
(07:09):
So I mean I missed that. I really missed it
when I was away. I missed the fact that I'm
back in blue. I'm back at working with the people,
with a group of people who want really good outcomes
for our community. So I do and I do know
that there's a lot of pressure on our front line,
and I do have nothing. I mean, I'm in CIB.
So I arrive at a job pretty much after the
front line had dealt with it and made it safe
(07:29):
for everyone, including police officers that are coming to deal
with it. And then we sit in the room and
tell them how they got it wrong, even though I
had the luxury of arriving and not being sworn out
or threatened, you know, so you know they're working hard.
I don't know. We're not robots. We don't always get
it right, but the meaning behind what a lot of
our team do is what our communities expect. So and
(07:51):
I've come back, and I think it's funny now because
my children have grown up and I'm working with people
and I look at a colleague and I'll say, is
that person older than my daughter? And I wonder because
I was experiencing it at twenty twenty one, twenty two
and I'm like, you know, and I'm thinking, I hope
they have the mental edge and toughness that they need
(08:13):
to put up with some of the stuff they're going
to see. You know.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, it's actually like, you know, going back to this report,
do you think there is some truth that experience officers
thinking new recruits are rubbish as a tale as old
as time. I mean, it's a cliche from the movies,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah. Look, so I haven't read the report, so I
can't really comment on it. But what I can tell
you is that I now tell the kids that every
song they listened to was a remake of a song
that was better when I was grown up. And every
time I start to talk about my childhood, my oldest
daughter is dead. I'm really sorry you had a shit
childhood over hearing about it. So I don't know. Look,
(08:50):
all I know is that I'm in the bay. We
have a lot of enthusiastic, fresh new people on the
front line. The opportunity is there for anyone. So you
don't have to be twenty six, twenty seven, and you
don't have to you know, being forty thirty eight, thirty nine.
Age is not a limit to what we do the
ability to go there and learn. So what I prefer
more experienced people who've lived life a little bit more. Yep.
(09:13):
Is it because I experienced some stuff when I was
younger and I thought looking back that I could have
done a better job. Yep. But we have some good
people on the front line, regardless of age, who are
just they're only a year in and we know they
came up against hardened criminals. And it's interesting. When I
first started working in South Auckland, I did a job
and I think the criminal felt sorry for me and
(09:33):
started giving me some guidance write into my notebook and
that might that might come back to bite me later on.
And I think he just thought, man, he's this idiot.
We have some.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Experience everywhere if you're willing to listen to them.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah. Yeah, And I mean I went back. I saw
my dad a year later. My dad's pretty important to me,
and I said to him, look, you know, I didn't
realize that we didn't grow up the richest family in
South Aukland. It's not the way had everything. He was
always at our sport, he was always there, had good
role models, I thought, and I traded on being South
Aukland hard. I had a really good family and you
know what, you know, I would say, there's a huge
(10:12):
percentage of percentage of really good families in South Aubland,
So just being from there doesn't mean you've seen what
these other families are going through. And so when I
sort of learned what it was all about a year
into the job, we were sitting down playing cards and
I said to Dad, I look on enough to say thanks,
you know, because actually you keep me out of trouble
and you did this and you did that. And then
he looked at me and he ask me what was wrong, like,
(10:34):
are you all right itself? Yeah? So I think I'd
only just got it and he'd been living it and
bringing it. So yeah, you know, it's funny because he
wasn't in the job, but I think he knew more
about it than me because of his lived experiences.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, that's nice. Wrong, just just going back to those
new recruit scenes, you say, a lot of them come
in bushy tailor and bright eye when they hit those
first days and see the reality of you head, you know,
a pretty full noise, domestic dispute going on. What do
you how do you keep those new recruits grounded or
you know, mentally strong, probably not the right word, but
(11:09):
that stop them getting cynical that you know what am
I going to face today?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Well, I'll just put it. I'll put it this way.
I mean, you've been in the industry a long long
time and I'm not having to go at your age.
Let to be honest, we're all we're a little bit
more experienced, we call it instead of old. But if
we put some people in your studio, you would know
who would be good for them and who would really
take them down the wrong sort of path. So we
try to put our teams around good people. So we
have people that come to work and they want to
(11:37):
excel and they want to be and they're really good
at teaching. And we have other people that come to
work and they've been doing this job for a while
now and they just they just want to come to
work and work and then go home, which is awesome,
nothing wrong with it, but we align them with the
right people.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I've been putting someone pretty green. Tyler's pretty green. He's
got a lot to learn.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
He's pretty much a criminal on the other side, but
he's alright. He gives me, he gets me some good tips.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
We're clearly patient. Look, it's putting good people around them,
and we need to look, we don't want to lose
police officers to other forces. Is like, I know some
good people who've taken the opportunity to go up to
Australia and that's fine, you know, and a lot of
them want to go there and clear some debt in
terms of maybe getting into some homes and coming back.
A lot a lot of them want to come back.
(12:20):
A lot of them are there in realizing actually they're
onto a good thing here and they have come back.
But if we can, you know, if we just if
we just align our people with good people, then they
learn the right habits. So I think I think that's
been one of the drives. I think. I think our
new commissioner definitely wants that. I think he's talked about
leaders being visible. Like I've come back into a leadership role,
(12:42):
and it's been very clear to me when I came
back there, there's an expectation even though I'm this huge
diva who used to be on television, and I share
some of my knowledge, and I share some of my skills,
and I love myself to the standard of talking to
new people coming out of college. But no, look, I
mean Alchemists has been very clear around that. So you know,
(13:03):
I think, I think we have really good leaders in
the job who've been tied up with the administration, who
I've been encouraged to get back out and share that
knowledge and experience. So I'll come back energized because I
had a year away. But coming back, I'm really I'm
liking what I'm seeing. And I know, look, we've had
we've had COVID, We've had a whole lot of other
things that have made it really hard to police at times.
(13:25):
But look got I mean the reason I'm back is
my wife said it was really bad. Actually she was
lucky off to work. I went here. She goes, well,
that's just the way work is. People don't go to
work because they enjoy it. Get over it, get out
there and make some money. And I'm like, yeah, yes,
sweet is. But you know, like in the police, I
never looked at my watch and thought, you know, should
(13:47):
I wish it was knock off? You know, there's things
I've looked forward to. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
I'm not I'm not an idiot, but I just enjoy
the organization that I joined. So I'm very lucky and
I know these opportunities. But for me too, we see
the high standard. If we get it wrong, take it
on the chin all day every day, because we shouldn't.
We shouldn't as an organization, we shouldn't be getting it wrong.
(14:08):
So with these people that are coming in, we need
to look after them, and I think I think we're
on the right track to doing that. I haven't read
the report, but what I know is that if someone
starts at our stations he's new, the team will rep
around them, and if we see behaviors we like, we'll
support it. And if we see behaviors we don't like,
we're encouraged to do something about it. So I'm not
saying that I'm not saying that it isn't answer come
(14:29):
in into the organization, but realistically there is a lot
of good people here to sort of help them through there.
So I would hope that that's been reflected from the
tops of the bottom of the country.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, Rob, it's been fantastic to chat with you. Thank
you very much forgiving at your time, and what a
great man to be in the police.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You a great New Zealander for more from News Talks
at b Listen live on air or online, and keep
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on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk z'd be
follow this and our wide range of podcast now on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Rob le Mootto joins us on the phone right now. Rob,
good afternoon to you, and thank you so much for
joining us.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah, good afternoon things. Thanks for having me. It's all right.
I did ten seven while I was in the police.
I kind of kind of surprised a lot of people
as well, because I'd host the show. Then I'll turn
up at a job and some would say you're really
in the police, not point to a taser and say,
well that's a realer. So did ten years, mate, and
then took a took a year off to try some
(00:47):
other things before coming back. So yea, I've been back
for a few weeks now and loving it, loving it fantastic.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
So you know this talk in this report that's come
out today, as you know, the recruits on their first
day not knowing certain things. What was your first day
on the job, Like, yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
I didn't read the report, but I've certainly heard that
it's come out. My first thing the job was incredible.
I was sitting at my desk about three or four
hours and looking at my watch and I was actually
thinking I don't have enough time left at work instead
of you know, it's time to go seeing So I
was pretty young, I was pretty naive. I didn't really
know what I was getting myself into. And college college
(01:24):
actually set me up really well. I was on one
sixty six again at the college with some really good people.
I was the youngest, so I actually did a bit
of growing while I was there, and then came out
to some work with some really good people, so very lucky,
very very energized. I got a little bit disappointed. It's
some of what I saw because I think, I think
my mum and did a pretty good job of sheltering
(01:45):
us from some of the real realities of some of
some of the areas of the community that aren't the greatest,
you know. So yeah, I think I think when I
hit the ground, there's a bit of an eye out.
Nuh But no, Look, I really enjoyed it, really enjoyed it.
Didn't take it for granted, and and then obviously as
it progressed, I found other areas where I could help,
(02:05):
so sitting estics of the job. Just loved, absolutely loved
the working in our undefender squad. Really loved my deployment overseas,
working in a couple of communities when in Bogainville up
and Top in New Guinea, it was pretty awesome. So
we're pretty lucky, pretty lucky.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Here, Hasson, did you what was your first arrest? Did
you execute your first first?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
The rest was someone who stole a peck at a
churn gun, So yeah, I don't know, I don't notice
the kids know what cashes or sense are, but I
think it had cost twenty five cents and they were
a receidivius offender. I know it's a bit embarrassing when
when you look back, but the tolerance for that sort
of behavior was pretty low, and you had to repeat offenders.
(02:48):
And this person had been wanted and had done a
few things. So my senior offsider was a few days
out of college. He had told me that it wasn't
really the value of the atom, of the fact that
this person wasn't changing their behavior. So they came through,
and of course I think I was the arresting officer
because he didn't want to put his name on the
charge sheet, so my name went on me, you know,
(03:09):
and you kind of realize that some lawyers picked it
up and looked at the charge and everything else. But
we know that it was for the totality of their behavior,
not just one incident. But anyway, yeah, you're not the greatest.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
How quickly did you know? How soon from you know,
getting out there and on the front line, did you
experience something that you thought, this is beyond my training,
this is quite extreme.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Oh yeah, Look to be fair, and you know, no
one likes to admit their age, but I do remember
my first few days in the job because they were
just you know, you have this level of excitement and
you see things and you do things. So I mean
my first day I was overwhelmed because we had paperwork
to do and I was sold on the thought of
(03:53):
just chasing bad people and brand new holdings. You know,
I couldn't afford to holding back then, so at work.
But my offside I still remember him. He runs the
station in the coast and he'd say, slow down, young fellow,
slow down, young fellow. You know, like I want to
get there, and we're going to a family harm incident.
There was a lot of yelling and screaming, and getting
(04:13):
there was exciting, but getting out and dealing with it,
I certainly learned it's not. It wasn't what I thought
it was. But you know what, we ended up helping
some people out of a pretty horrible situation. So you
kind of learned to enjoy certain aspects of it, which
keeps you coming back. You know.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
So you say, you know, slow downs, fellow, slow down,
young fellow. How important are the senior officers in terms
of making good recruits and two good police officers?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Oh, it's like anywhere, mate. So I went to a
factory to you know, get rid of a little bit
of enthusiasm and mature a little bit. I went to
a recruiting office, was like, you're not old enough. And
then I went and work in a factory for a
few months and I learned, yeah, look, and even in
the factory there's some senior people who were sort of like,
we don't do it that way. We do it this way.
(04:58):
So I think in an industry, you go and learn
as you go. I think I just think that, you know,
in the police, as soon as you leave college, you're
a role model. Whether you want to be or not,
you're a role model. We've got a uniform. More than
people look to you for help. So I look at
some of our sporting teams made you would have seen
in the past. We have these people and sports teams
who have let us down and anyone sees their role models,
(05:19):
well they're not really. They're good at what they do
and some clubs are better than others. That a sort
of getting these these young people ready for what lies ahead.
And I think at college made they've got the hardest
job in the world because you couldn't have someone there
for two years and they could come out and still
not be ready for what they encounter, you know. So
it is about having good people around them, and it
(05:39):
is about when you leave college understanding that the public
expect excellence from the start. They don't age or lack
of experience means nothing if you get it wrong. And
I feel sorry for our teams who are doing this
in front of the cameras. I mean, it's ironic that
I was on the camera give them. But when I
left Police College, I started when we didn't have cell things.
(06:00):
You wanted to ring someone, we had the dial tone
and you really hope that they didn't have a zero
were a nine because it was by the time he died,
it took for you to get back for the next number.
So it was like, it's just yeah, I mean, the
world out there now people see it. And also we
have so many things that are taken out of context,
Like they'll put something up and they'll say, look, the
police have terroorized these people, and it's fourteen seconds, you know,
(06:24):
But our team have put up with stuff for five, six,
seven minutes before they even before they've even reacted, you know.
So she's a hard world for the front line, and
I do feel for our teams. But we've got some
good people out there, and I actually have no issues
with reports that come out, had no issues with people
ringing up like your station and telling us where we're
getting it right, where we're getting it wrong, because we
(06:46):
only learn from what we do. And like I said,
I'm lucky I came out at a time where being
recorded and being posted, and we get posted by a
lot of bad people. They come out and they post,
and then they cut and they mix and they put
it up and they shape our teams and doing all
these horrible things. But I don't know a colleague that
I've come to work with it comes to work to
make it a bad day for another family, you know.
(07:09):
So I mean I missed that. I really missed it
when I was away. I missed the fact that I'm
back in blue. I'm back at working with the people,
with a group of people who want really good outcomes
for our community. So I do and I do know
that there's a lot of pressure on our front line,
and I do have nothing. I mean, I'm in CIB.
So I arrive at a job pretty much after the
front line had dealt with it and made it safe
(07:29):
for everyone, including police officers that are coming to deal
with it. And then we sit in the room and
tell them how they got it wrong, even though I
had the luxury of arriving and not being sworn out
or threatened, you know, so you know they're working hard.
I don't know. We're not robots. We don't always get
it right, but the meaning behind what a lot of
our team do is what our communities expect. So and
(07:51):
I've come back, and I think it's funny now because
my children have grown up and I'm working with people
and I look at a colleague and I'll say, is
that person older than my daughter? And I wonder because
I was experiencing it at twenty twenty one, twenty two
and I'm like, you know, and I'm thinking, I hope
they have the mental edge and toughness that they need
(08:13):
to put up with some of the stuff they're going
to see. You know.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, it's actually like, you know, going back to this report,
do you think there is some truth that experience officers
thinking new recruits are rubbish as a tale as old
as time. I mean, it's a cliche from the movies,
isn't it.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Yeah. Look, so I haven't read the report, so I
can't really comment on it. But what I can tell
you is that I now tell the kids that every
song they listened to was a remake of a song
that was better when I was grown up. And every
time I start to talk about my childhood, my oldest
daughter is dead. I'm really sorry you had a shit
childhood over hearing about it. So I don't know. Look,
(08:50):
all I know is that I'm in the bay. We
have a lot of enthusiastic, fresh new people on the
front line. The opportunity is there for anyone. So you
don't have to be twenty six, twenty seven, and you
don't have to you know, being forty thirty eight, thirty nine.
Age is not a limit to what we do the
ability to go there and learn. So what I prefer
more experienced people who've lived life a little bit more. Yep.
(09:13):
Is it because I experienced some stuff when I was
younger and I thought looking back that I could have
done a better job. Yep. But we have some good
people on the front line, regardless of age, who are
just they're only a year in and we know they
came up against hardened criminals. And it's interesting. When I
first started working in South Auckland, I did a job
and I think the criminal felt sorry for me and
(09:33):
started giving me some guidance write into my notebook and
that might that might come back to bite me later on.
And I think he just thought, man, he's this idiot.
We have some.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Experience everywhere if you're willing to listen to them.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yeah. Yeah, And I mean I went back. I saw
my dad a year later. My dad's pretty important to me,
and I said to him, look, you know, I didn't
realize that we didn't grow up the richest family in
South Aukland. It's not the way had everything. He was
always at our sport, he was always there, had good
role models, I thought, and I traded on being South
Aukland hard. I had a really good family and you
know what, you know, I would say, there's a huge
(10:12):
percentage of percentage of really good families in South Aubland,
So just being from there doesn't mean you've seen what
these other families are going through. And so when I
sort of learned what it was all about a year
into the job, we were sitting down playing cards and
I said to Dad, I look on enough to say thanks,
you know, because actually you keep me out of trouble
and you did this and you did that. And then
he looked at me and he ask me what was wrong, like,
(10:34):
are you all right itself? Yeah? So I think I'd
only just got it and he'd been living it and
bringing it. So yeah, you know, it's funny because he
wasn't in the job, but I think he knew more
about it than me because of his lived experiences.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, that's nice. Wrong, just just going back to those
new recruit scenes, you say, a lot of them come
in bushy tailor and bright eye when they hit those
first days and see the reality of you head, you know,
a pretty full noise, domestic dispute going on. What do
you how do you keep those new recruits grounded or
you know, mentally strong, probably not the right word, but
(11:09):
that stop them getting cynical that you know what am
I going to face today?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Well, I'll just put it. I'll put it this way.
I mean, you've been in the industry a long long
time and I'm not having to go at your age.
Let to be honest, we're all we're a little bit
more experienced, we call it instead of old. But if
we put some people in your studio, you would know
who would be good for them and who would really
take them down the wrong sort of path. So we
try to put our teams around good people. So we
have people that come to work and they want to
(11:37):
excel and they want to be and they're really good
at teaching. And we have other people that come to
work and they've been doing this job for a while
now and they just they just want to come to
work and work and then go home, which is awesome,
nothing wrong with it, but we align them with the
right people.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
I've been putting someone pretty green. Tyler's pretty green. He's
got a lot to learn.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
He's pretty much a criminal on the other side, but
he's alright. He gives me, he gets me some good tips.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
We're clearly patient. Look, it's putting good people around them,
and we need to look, we don't want to lose
police officers to other forces. Is like, I know some
good people who've taken the opportunity to go up to
Australia and that's fine, you know, and a lot of
them want to go there and clear some debt in
terms of maybe getting into some homes and coming back.
A lot a lot of them want to come back.
(12:20):
A lot of them are there in realizing actually they're
onto a good thing here and they have come back.
But if we can, you know, if we just if
we just align our people with good people, then they
learn the right habits. So I think I think that's
been one of the drives. I think. I think our
new commissioner definitely wants that. I think he's talked about
leaders being visible. Like I've come back into a leadership role,
(12:42):
and it's been very clear to me when I came
back there, there's an expectation even though I'm this huge
diva who used to be on television, and I share
some of my knowledge, and I share some of my skills,
and I love myself to the standard of talking to
new people coming out of college. But no, look, I
mean Alchemists has been very clear around that. So you know,
(13:03):
I think, I think we have really good leaders in
the job who've been tied up with the administration, who
I've been encouraged to get back out and share that
knowledge and experience. So I'll come back energized because I
had a year away. But coming back, I'm really I'm
liking what I'm seeing. And I know, look, we've had
we've had COVID, We've had a whole lot of other
things that have made it really hard to police at times.
(13:25):
But look got I mean the reason I'm back is
my wife said it was really bad. Actually she was
lucky off to work. I went here. She goes, well,
that's just the way work is. People don't go to
work because they enjoy it. Get over it, get out
there and make some money. And I'm like, yeah, yes,
sweet is. But you know, like in the police, I
never looked at my watch and thought, you know, should
(13:47):
I wish it was knock off? You know, there's things
I've looked forward to. Don't get me wrong, I'm not
I'm not I'm not an idiot, but I just enjoy
the organization that I joined. So I'm very lucky and
I know these opportunities. But for me too, we see
the high standard. If we get it wrong, take it
on the chin all day every day, because we shouldn't.
We shouldn't as an organization, we shouldn't be getting it wrong.
(14:08):
So with these people that are coming in, we need
to look after them, and I think I think we're
on the right track to doing that. I haven't read
the report, but what I know is that if someone
starts at our stations he's new, the team will rep
around them, and if we see behaviors we like, we'll
support it. And if we see behaviors we don't like,
we're encouraged to do something about it. So I'm not
saying that I'm not saying that it isn't answer come
(14:29):
in into the organization, but realistically there is a lot
of good people here to sort of help them through there.
So I would hope that that's been reflected from the
tops of the bottom of the country.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, Rob, it's been fantastic to chat with you. Thank
you very much forgiving at your time, and what a
great man to be in the police.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
You a great New Zealander for more from News Talks
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