Police are depending on 'individual champions' to understand disability communities

On Wednesday, New Zealand Police published preliminary findings on the events surrounding the misidentification of a young autistic person in Waikato. Mistaken for a 20 year-old-woman, an 11-year-old non-verbal autistic girl was handcuffed, restrained at a mental health facility and injected twice with antipsychotic drugs. 

According to the police’s preliminary findings, Waikato Police used a photo comparison of the 11-year-old and the 20-year-old leading them to the conclusion that they were the same person. Assistant Commissioner Sandra Venables said in a press release the patient was misidentified “despite genuine attempts to confirm her identity”, but also recognised that their “processes can be improved to further reduce the risk of an incident like this recurring”.

Though it’s unclear what processes are being referred to, New Zealand Police now have even more of an imperative to implement the findings of the Understanding Policing Delivery (UPD) research on police experiences for disabled people. The researchers include Ihi Research, Mana Pounamu Consulting, and Donald Beasley Institute (DBI), and an independent quantitative researcher.

In the news, the UPD has been talked about in reference particularly to interactions between Māori and police, but less so between d/Deaf, disabled and tāngata whaikaha experiences with police. It was DBI who conducted the research on police-experienced tāngata whaikaha, D/deaf and disabled people, and police officers; while others focused on Māori and Pasifika police-experienced people and police officers.  

Imagine being blind and finding out that your police file says you’re unlikely to be because you can freely move around your home and check your emails; or police officers assuming you’re always on the piss because of your slurred speech, but it’s actually caused by a traumatic brain injury; or being put on remand for four, five days without any access to an NZSL interpreter. None of these are hypotheticals, but just a few of the case studies from the research.

Within the research are also stories of autistic individuals being stopped on the street and being falsely accused of crimes, or having their stimming behaviours perceived as violent or disorderly, or having force used on them too quickly or inappropriately leading to disability-related distress and dysregulation. 

DBI interviewed 22 disabled people who have either been stopped, questioned or arrested by the police, and 20 New Zealand Police participants. What was agreed on between both groups was that police lacked knowledge in disability resulting in harm towards disabled individuals who came into contact with police. 

Yet this major piece of work has been eclipsed by political distraction. On November 20 last year, the same day this report was released, Andrew Coster, the former police commissioner who commissioned this work, was replaced by a successor: Richard Chambers. The day before, the Hīkoi mō te Tiriti had just arrived at Parliament, and the day after, the Gangs Act 2024 was to come into effect. The component of the work relating to disabled people didn’t receive media attention until the end of January this year.

One of the findings of the research is that there are individual champions for disabled people in the New Zealand Police, but they don’t work “within a systemic, organisational policy framework that supports disability-responsive policing.” This came from police participants themselves. 

Meanwhile, some leaders are putting the event of the misidentification of the 11-year-old girl down to a big mistake, rather than suggesting that it has anything to do with a structural fault. Speaking for Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora, Dr Richard Sullivan described it as “result[ing] from mistaken identity and human error”. And in an interview with RNZ, Chris Hipkins said he didn’t want to politicise the situation. “I don’t think the current government of the day have any responsibility for that. It’s clearly a major mistake.”

The difference with this research compared to other research on police bias was that it was a collaboration between police themselves and their biggest critics. Brigit Mirfin-Veitch, the director of DBI said, “while there are many studies internationally that have sought to understand how disabled people experience policing interactions, none, to our knowledge, have been conducted at the request of the police themselves.”

“For much of the study, we anticipated that the research would strongly and positively impact the NZ Police’s work with disabled people and communities,” says Mirfin-Veich. “We knew the stories and experiences that tākata whaikaha, D/deaf and disabled people shared illustrated the best and the worst of policing in this country and provided evidence of inequity and bias - evidence that could be used to underpin police policy in the areas of training and practice.”

But this work has been slow. After the UPD researchers’ contracts had ended and the research had been published late last year, police advised research teams of the closure of the UPD Research Programme and that over the following months, the Commissioner and Police Executive would review the recommendations as a whole and consider a response. 

In those months following late November, the new Commissioner reduced the size of the Police Executive “to ensure it is fit-for-purpose and provides strong, clear leadership to the frontline and delivers on police’s refreshed strategic priorities.” Part of this restructure included scrapping the iwi and communities role, despite the UPD phase one research finding that being Māori increased the likelihood of prosecution by 11% compared to NZ Europeans.

This week, a police spokesperson told The D*List that the UPD recommendations will be considered over the coming months and “a number of UPD recommendations are in line with work already being progressed.” Mirfin-Veitch also confirmed with The D*List this week that UPD research teams have been invited to share and discuss the research with NZ Police in early May. 

In the meantime, how many more “human errors” can we afford before leaders can recognise and treat this as a systemic problem? Or will future cases continue to be talked about as a terrible mistake?

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