Police Minister Chris Hipkins says he has asked about claims police falsely reported cars as stolen so they could access private number plate recognition systems while tracking Covid-infected women who triggered a lockdown in Northland last October, but is reserving judgement on the matter.
The New Zealand Herald reported today that detectives listed cars associated with the women as stolen so they could track those vehicles using the private CCTV networks operated by two companies, Auror and Safer Cities.
Documents released to the Herald under the Official Information Act show the Auror system identified the women at a petrol station in Whangārei, during the wide-ranging search for them dubbed Operation Hiking.
But a spokesperson for Auror says that police didn't need to falsely report the vehicles as stolen to use their systems.
They explained that the Auror Platform allows police to access specific number plate recognition data to locate either a stolen vehicle or a vehicle of interest, through a warrant process or through emergency powers under the Search and Surveillance Act.
"In this particular circumstance, it appears the platform's emergency powers process wasn't utilised," they said. "The request was misclassified, even though there was a legitimate reason under the Search and Surveillance Act to locate the vehicle.
"We have reached out to NZP to ensure the correct platform procedures are followed at all times, and have offered to support further follow-up training of the platform for police users."
The spokesperson added that Auror "takes privacy very seriously; the platform has a number of robust safeguards to ensure individuals' privacy and security is paramount, and to also ensure our communities are kept safe".
Police have been approached for comment about the revelations.
The security cameras are used in locations such as petrol stations, shopping malls, big box stores and supermarkets.
It comes just days after the police issued new rules around the two companies' automated number plate recognition cameras.
Responding to the news, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern rejected suggestions that the Government had created an environment at the time where pursuing Covid cases was considered more important than abiding by other laws, and said the issue was a matter for police.
"This is not something at a level of operational detail that I have a large insight to," she said. "I think the point to keep in mind is, at that time, you'll remember people were looking for information because of course we were trying to contact trace cases.
"Whether or not that was done appropriately though, would be a question for the police."
Hipkins said he'd spoken with police about the matter this morning.
"They're obviously looking into exactly what's happened here," he said. "There was a legitimate way for the police to use the platform to do what they were seeking to do which was to identify where the women were, where they had been, bearing in mind there was a huge amount of pressure at the time to find them.
"They'll be looking now to identify whether the right approach was used or whether someone has made a mistake."
HIpkins added that he would reserve his judgement until police had finished their investigation.
Mark Mitchell, National's police spokesperson, said Hipkins should "front up and actually explain to the country exactly what's going on" but he defended the role of the front-line police involved.
"If you look at the context around it, the police were probably under enormous pressure at the time, and there must be an anomaly in the system," he said. "That's not the fault of the front-line police officers who are just trying to do their job.
"That's something that police national headquarters maybe needs to go back and have a look at now and see what agreements are made with those private companies in terms of sourcing information.
"It's really important for us and the public to get behind and support our police, they're policing a very difficult environment at the moment, that thin blue line is definitely stretched to breaking point, and we should have full trust and confidence in them."
Earlier this month it was revealed the women at the centre of the lockdown had been given permission to travel to Northland, having previously had their application rejected.
At the time, the incident was incorrectly labelled a border breach which led to the region entering a level 3 lockdown.
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