I say this mindful of the stresses of dealing with one of the major blots on this past official holiday season – the appallingly high road toll.

Research consistently confirms the devastating impact on first responders who deal with the serious injuries and fatalities suffered in vehicle crashes. I urge you to take the time and help available if you need to.

With the 2021-22 holiday period as one of our worst on record, with 18 deaths, I am left questioning whether, from a policing perspective, the ball was dropped in the battle of competing resource demands.

Police has already acknowledged its inability to deliver on its contractual road safety obligations to Waka Kotahi, and yet there was, at the very time of peak need, “capacity” to deploy hundreds of officers away from road policing duties in all districts to staff iwi checkpoints and reassurance patrols in Te Tai Tokerau and Tairāwhiti.

The deployment of 400 officers was authorised to address the valid concerns of local iwi about non-residents potentially bringing in Covid-19 and endangering vulnerable populations, but was the stationing of so many staff in these districts for five weeks really the highest Police priority?

It is extremely difficult to accept that there is no correlation between the absence of officers on roads throughout the country and the number of serious and fatal crashes.

There has been no shortage of commentary questioning the impartiality of Police from the beginning of the iwi checkpoints back in 2020, but the Covid-19 Public Health Response Amendment Act (No 2) 2021 provided Te Tai Tokerau and Tairāwhiti iwi with an expectation of inclusion in the policing of their borders.

My question is not about the legality of the checkpoints, but whether we can convincingly conclude that the deployment of hundreds of police officers to staff them suppressed, or was vital to the suppression of, the spread of Covid-19 to Tai Tokerau and Tairāwhiti.

Compounding that was that the checkpoints lasted only a few days in Northland and then staff carried out what were referred to as reassurance patrols. What these achieved is unclear. Many officers were critical of the way they were deployed. They believed they achieved nothing related to the suppression of Covid-19, and while deployed, they were directed to have a very limited role in other areas of policing.

Many questioned why the deployment continued after it was demonstrably no longer required.

At stake for Police is the importance of maintaining operational independence from government, operating with the consent of all New Zealanders, being open to respectful debate and cognisant of the need for acting in step with Treaty of Waitangi obligations, given the disparity in outcomes for Māori in health and other social factors, including in the criminal justice system.

It’s a tough balance to achieve in challenging times, but if these core measures of effective policing are missing, we have poor outcomes for all, including Police.

The timing of the need for staff to be both out on the roads and at checkpoints could hardly have been worse.

No matter which way I look at it, even accounting for the relentless and competing demands on resources, I remain unconvinced that this deployment stacked up with Prevention First or evidence-based policing.

It’s a serious question for Police, made more confronting by the raw numbers. Eighteen lives lost in 12 days of carnage on our roads.