Whānau concerned at Hipkins' police photo law change suggestion

The whānau of two young people who were stopped and photographed by police despite not having committed any crime have expressed their horror and sadness after Police Minister Chris Hipkins suggested he may consider a law change to allow the practice to continue.

A recent investigation by the Privacy Commission and the Independent Police Conduct Authority found officers have been routinely photographing members of the public, including young people, illegally for at a least a decade.

Chris Hipkins said at a press conference a law change may be needed to allow the police to do their jobs.

"In many cases, they are consenting and their parents are consenting. The issue here is, what real harm is being done by this?" he asked.

The investigation was launched because multiple young Māori, who had not committed a crime or were linked to a crime, had been photographed without consent.

Charlene Sadlier's two nephews were among them. They were 15 at the time, waiting for their koro outside while he was shopping at a store on Whanganui's main street.

"It's very upsetting. Since the day that happened to our nephews, life hasn't been the same for them," she said.

"They were young, brave men and something was taken from them."

Hipkins said he was waiting on advice before determining his next steps.

He declined an interview with 1News.

Police can already photograph members of the public lawfully if they've been arrested or if there's a reasonable possibility they are linked to a crime.

Sadlier fears that if a law-change allows officers to photograph anyone they deem suspicious, Māori will be targeted.

"We now know that most of the rangatahi that they have photographs of are Māori, so I have great concerns for that. How do you define somebody acting suspiciously?"

"I think this is most probably a cop out, the fact that they most probably haven't caught a lot of the ram raiders that they were hoping to catch, and they think this legislation will help with all of those things, to catch those people. This could cause trauma for those rangatahi that are actually innocent," she said.

The report by the Privacy Commission and the IPCA found most of the photographs police collect for intelligence purposes are Māori.

READ MORE: Police set new rules after young Māori unlawfully photographed

Police Association President Chris Cahill said people simply needed to have faith in police.

"Sometimes, you have to have some trust in police to do things right," he said.

"The reality is, especially as it relates to fingerprints, it solves hundreds of crimes a year."

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster agreed, saying a recent compliance notice from the Privacy Commissioner directing police to delete all unlawful photographs in their possession, and forcing officers to comply with the Privacy Act, was proving challenging.

"Fingerprints and photographs help us to identify offenders, so to the extent that we are now in compliance with the order of the officer of the Privacy Commissioner, that is causing some limitations on how we could have identified offenders in the past," he said.

"People expect police to be able to solve crime to apprehend offenders and to use a range of tools to do that. But they also expect to enjoy privacy from unreasonable intrusion."

National and Act want to see more detail around any law-change, but said they could support it if it helps police protect the community.

"Police need to be able to do their jobs. They’re demoralised enough by the lack of support from government, we should be empowering them to do their jobs," said Act police spokesperson Chris Baillie.

But others, including the Maori Party's Rawiri Waititi, totally rejected it.

"How can the Minister of Police condone this behaviour? Why doesn't he consider laws that continue to protect rangatahi Māori instead of changing the law in retrospect to protect the illegal actions of police?

“The Government wants to turn an illegal fishing expedition of rangatahi Māori into a legal fishing expedition."

During the investigation into the practice, officers claimed young people were less likely to commit a crime if they knew their photograph had been taken.

But they could not provide sufficient evidence to back this up.

Privacy lawyer Kathryn Dalziel said careful consideration of the privacy principles would be needed in any law-change.

"Police weren't able to point and show the statistics of why this was helping policing, so we need more information and more data," she said.

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"It may well be that there is law change to allow more collection but making sure that it's done in a proper, measured, balance way."