Heather du Plessis-Allan: We’re watching Andrew Coster slowly abandon his woke policing style

I think we’re watching Andrew Coster slowly abandon his woke policing style. 
He revealed this morning that he’s now reviewing the police pursuit policy. 
Because these kids are ram-raiding then running away from the cops and the cops aren’t allowed to chase them. 
The fact that he’s reviewing the policy, is a backdown for him because he’s the one who changed the policy in the first place to stop chasing kids 18 months ago. 
What’s happened since? 
Ram raiding has gotten out of hand because kids know they can run from the police. 
Coster's also had to start going hard on gangs. 
Remember how keen he was on policing by consent because police cannot "arrest their way" out of the organised crime problem. 
Well, he’s now promising to arrest the hell out of the feuding gangs in Auckland saying police will find ways to “to target any activity to send them a message” until they “pull their heads in”. 
His words. Not mine. 
He’s now set up Operation Cobalt, which by the way, is basically a version of Simon Bridge’s Strike Force Raptor, a softer version, but a version nonetheless. 
Strike Force Raptor was a group of cops tasked with cracking down on gangs. 
Operation Cobalt is a group of cops tasked with cracking down on gangs. 
I think the turning point came at that parliamentary protest. 
It gave us a front-row seat to what happens when Coster is allowed to run his woke policing style. 
He tried the softly softly approach. Didn’t want to take down the tents at the start. Kept promising he was going to tow vehicles unless people moved then didn’t tow vehicles when they didn’t move and how did that go? 
Terribly. It ended up with the worst policing scenes since the Springbok tour. 
So, in the end, he had a go at doing things his way. It didn’t work and the public had a gutsful of it. We want baddies arrested and we want front line cops to be able to do their jobs. 
And Coster, I think, is having to come around to our way of thinking.

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