Lance Burdett: Former Police Negotiator on the rising public trust and confidence in the Police

Public trust and confidence in New Zealand Police is recovering. 

The latest Crime and Victims Survey shows its risen to 69% – a 2% rise in the year to October 2024. 

More than 80% of Kiwis believe officers conduct themselves professionally. 

Former Police Negotiator Lance Burdett told Andrew Dickens it's good news, and follows changes to the organisation's leadership. 

He says new Police Commissioner Richard Chambers has front-line experience and is making alternations that have a flow-on effect to officers. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good news. Our trust and police is recovering. The latest
crime and Victim survey is out in sixty nine percent
of people say they trust the police. This is good.
The numbers are going in the right direction. That's still though,
thirty one percent of people who don't trust the cops.
So former police negotiator Lance Burnett is joined him in
our Hello, Lace Mording, Andrew, what are these numbers tell you?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's a good thing to be honest. Having confidence in
police has a flow on effect. So you and I
we could talk about the crime stats that came out, Well,
it depends on what you measure and they ebb and flow,
but really it's that confidence in police. There has been
a change in leadership at the top and I can
see that immediately within the organization is a positive impact.

(00:41):
Commissioner Richard Chambers. He has a frontline officer who has
lots of experience and operations and he's putting that to
the fore right. So he's made some changes at the
top that's going to flow on down to the police themselves.
You're now seeing more police out on the street. That's
a great thing. We're going back to opening up stations
that we're closed. See the of what is happening here

(01:02):
is to be able to see police to get them
back into the community, and that makes people feel safe.
Therefore it lifts their confidence and more likely to report crime. Now,
there could be a bit of a backlash, and sometimes
there is that more people start to report crime, so
we suddenly have this great fear factor of goodness, me,
crime's going up. No, it's not. People have more confidence

(01:25):
to report crime, so you can expect perhaps a little
bit of a bullip, but it's a good thing. I'm
seeing more cops around Auckland City and it's great to
see them back walking on the street.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's going back to first principles. We were trying to
save money, but it was a silly decision. But hey,
we still have thirty one percent of people who don't
trust the cops. So what does that say to you.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, that says to me, you're always going to have
a number. And it depends on the time of the
survey whether they had a positive or negative interaction with police.
For whatever reason. I ended up investigating police officers and
what I was most of the complaints were from attitude
or bad language, and so who hasn't said a bad thing,

(02:07):
or who hasn't a bad day and who hasn't had
something happened before they go, so that could have an impact.
But you know, I also want to come back to
the fact that it's not just police that we need
to focus on. If we're going to look overall at
reducing crime, there's other agencies. Reducing poverty, lifting education, and
lowering unemployment are the three drivers of crime, so we

(02:28):
can start focusing on them. But yeah, overall, I think
this is a really good sign, a really good sign
for the future.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Lad. So thank you for your Termlinesperdetz, who is a
former police negotiating for more from.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Earlier edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
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