With the brakes having been applied to recruit training and Police attrition levels hovering around 2 per cent, the chances of getting reaccepted into the job are slimmer than ever. Right now, they are nil.

It’s been a cruel blow to some former police officers, including former constable Matt Lawrence, who three years ago made what he thought was a sensible decision and life goal.

He and his wife, a primary school teacher, felt it was not going to be possible for them to raise a family and buy a house in New Zealand on the wages they were earning.

Since joining Police in 2013, Matt’s career had included being a field training officer, working for the tactical crime unit, relieving on Waiheke Island and being an acting sergeant at Auckland Central.

“We loved our jobs and where we were based, but we knew we would never be able to get ahead unless we made a drastic decision,” Matthew says.

That decision was to move to Adelaide for a few years, to further their careers and save for a deposit on a house back in Auckland. “We did our research and found we could transfer to Adelaide and still be employed in teaching and policing.”

Matt worked for the South Australian Police as a field tutor and senior patrol officer.

He says he was told that if he returned within five years, he would be able to rejoin NZ Police. He kept in touch with the recruiting team and in May 2019 completed an expression of interest form outlining his wish to return in 2020.

In February 2020, he filled out a raft of other forms and questionnaires before he and his wife, with a baby on the way, returned to New Zealand just before the Level 4 Covid-19 lockdown began.

While the lockdown put a hold on matters, he was still optimistic and used the time to make sure he would be ready when the call came – completing a practice PCT, getting health checks and a clearance from the Australian Federal Police “so I was prepared at the drop of a hat”.

However, on May 11, the recruiting team contacted him to say that due to lower than usual attrition rates and a “successful” recruiting campaign, no rejoin positions were available. The email said that decision had been made on March 31, 2020.

It was a real shock to the 28-year-old who had aspired to be a police officer as a teenager and saw it as a long-term career, not just a job, but a lifestyle and a vocation, with the goal of becoming a sergeant.

Matt accepts the reality that there are no guarantees when you leave a job that it will still be there for you later, but he was “dumbfounded” when he realised that recruiters were making the conscious decision to hire new police officers instead of people who were fully qualified and could hit the ground running.

He was also annoyed about the time-lag in being advised of the policy, and the suggestion from one of the recruiters that he could apply to go through Police College was laughable. “It seemed highly impractical to send someone who had qualified as a police officer, field tutor/field training officer and had a successful career in two countries back to college.”

What concerns him, he says, is it’s obvious that Police needs experienced staff. The arrival of a lot of new recruits, while welcome, is putting pressure on on-the-job training at the mid-level.

“New Zealand Police needs experienced police officers who are able to train new constables. I had one officer tell me that they were one of the most senior people on their team with only one and half years’ experience. A sergeant told me they were struggling for experience on a lot of teams and it was common to pair probationary constables with each other.”

Covid-19 has also had a part to play in this story, with fears over economic uncertainty and job security leading to senior Police staff who might previously have retired in their 50s choosing to stay on, leading to a decline in turnover at that level.

Just how many former experienced police officers are waiting in the wings for a chance to get back into the ranks of Police is not known. A handful of examples have been reported to the Police Association and one of those suggests there are “hundreds more of these stories”, including other people struggling to be accepted at the recruitment stage.

As for Matt and his wife, now parents to a baby girl born in August, the home-ownership dream has moved out of reach, even though they had saved enough for a deposit.

Matt is working on a rolling fixed-term contract as “a very overqualified” authorised officer in Auckland, but with just one, relatively insecure, income, the couple are now not in a financial position to service a mortgage.

“I understand the issues, but Police needs to realise that policing does not come down to quotas and money… it is the quality of staff that are face to face with the community that is the most important thing. New staff are a positive, but not at the sacrifice of losing experienced officers returning to the street.

“I’m already hearing stories of new officers that have been in the job for less than two years choosing to leave because they don’t like it. Every time I hear a story like that, I can’t help but think that it could have been a spot that I could have easily taken.”