Joining Police is pretty much a family tradition for the O’Donovans. They have been passing the baton from generation to generation for more than 140 years.

The tale of what is believed to be New Zealand’s longest serving police family begins with two brothers setting sail for Aotearoa’s West Coast from County Cork, Ireland, in 1878.

From there, the family’s story takes a few twists and turns – there is tragedy and triumph, lessons learnt and lessons given, a few tribulations and many tributes.

The final chapter goes to Detective Senior Sergeant Patrick Brian O’Donovan (Pat Jnr), who “closed the door” on his Police career in November 2022 after 45 years of service – 143 years and seven months after the first O’Donovans donned the blue uniform in New Zealand.

John O’Donovan and his older brother, Florence O’Donovan, left Ireland in 1878 with the intention of settling in Westland.

On the same day in April 1879, the pair signed up with the Police Branch of the Armed Constabulary in Hokitika – New Zealand's first national, civil police force wasn’t established until 1886. John became Police Commissioner and Florence a sergeant.

Tragically, a day before Florence would have notched up 18 years of service, he drowned attempting to rescue flooded settlers at Clive, near Napier. John and his wife, who had four children of their own, took in Florence’s five orphaned children.

A memorial monument was erected to Florence and nine other men who also drowned during the rescue mission on April 16, 1897 – including fellow police officer Constable Alfred Stephenson. The memorial stands near the Napier War Memorial Centre.

John spent the first 15 years of his police career in Wellington. According to his biography on Te Ara, he was “energetic, attentive and efficient”.

He worked his way up to watchhouse keeper and then later court orderly. In 1890, he qualified as a solicitor – the first police officer in New Zealand to do so.

After marrying, he moved to Stratford and then Hāwera before transferring back to Wellington after Florence’s death. In May 1898, John gave evidence to a royal commission on what was then the Police Force of New Zealand concerning the inadequate compassionate allowance for families of police who lost their lives on duty.

He also spoke about the need for police examinations and a better system of training. It played a part in John being appointed as the inaugural instructor at the first formal police training school in Mount Cook, Wellington, when it opened that year.

After stints as a supervisor in Wellington city police, a Magistrate’s Court prosecutor, working in Palmerston North, Invercargill, Napier and Dunedin, John returned to Wellington to head up the district and to stand in for Commissioner John Cullen when needed. John secured the top job on December 1, 1916 – amid World War I and later the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 9000 Kiwis.

“From 1918, O'Donovan sought to resolve outstanding administrative issues. The New Zealand Public Service Association was permitted to represent rank-and-file police. The relative status, pay and promotion prospects of the uniformed and detective branches were finally determined and an eight-hour shift system inaugurated,” Te Ara says.

Described as the first of the modern police leaders, John was said to be highly capable and innovative with a conciliatory approach. “Gentlemanly John” retired on December 31, 1921.

In the 1920 New Zealand Royal Visit Honours, John was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order, and in the 1922 King's Birthday Honours, he was made a Companion of the Imperial Service Order.

It could be said John’s son, Constable Joseph Finn-Barra O’Donovan, had big, shiny shoes to fill.

Joseph joined Police in 1922, soon after his father retired. Rather than reach high echelons, Joseph seemed content to remain a constable. He left the service in 1944 to go into business, ending the first run of O’Donovan police officers.

At the time of Joseph’s departure, his son, Detective Chief Inspector Patrick John O’Donovan, was a marine engineer. Family tradition and wanting to keep his feet on the ground saw him switch careers in 1953.

It quickly became evident joining Police was a good decision. Pat met his soon-to-be wife, Constable Helen Mary Harnett, during his training. They were married for 26 years and had seven children. Sadly, Helen died in 1979. Pat later married Raywyn Radcliffe, who was employed from 1956 to 1982 as a Police typist in Christchurch.

Pat entered the CIB in 1955. The following year, he moved south from Auckland, where he would spend the next 20 years, mostly in Christchurch. During the 1960s, he worked on almost every murder inquiry in the Canterbury-Westland District, including the Jennifer Beard case. He was regarded as a top homicide investigator.

It was the investigation into the disappearance of 17-year-old Gillian Thompson on January 1, 1967, that brought Pat his greatest honour – a British Empire Medal for bravery.

Three weeks later, a search was being made for Gillian’s body in an offal pit on John Ramsay’s property at Waihaorunga, near Waimate. While waiting, Ramsay asked to go to the toilet and returned with a rifle, threatening to shoot himself and others.

“He ordered all of us out except the ‘old fella’ and nodded towards me,” Pat recalled in the NZ Herald in 1981.

“I spent the next three hours interviewing him looking down the barrel of a rifle. Eventually he handed over the gun, gave himself up and confessed.”

Pat would go on to lecture in the homicide component of the CIB qualifying course for 14 years. He was also credited with inventing a three-tier kit with everything needed for a major crime scene search and revamping the “mountainous” system for filing paperwork in major cases. His method categorised and then divided documents into separate files for the scene, suspects and victims. It was adopted countrywide.

Pat crossed paths at work with many of his five “policing” children during his 32-year career.

Detective Senior Sergeant Patrick Brian O’Donovan (Pat Jnr) was the last of them to leave Police – after brothers Senior Constable John Joseph O’Donovan (QSM), Detective Sergeant Paul O’Donovan, Sergeant Michael Bernard O’Donovan and sister Detective Jennifer Mary O’Donovan (Jennifer went on to marry a fellow police officer, Christopher Stokes).

John’s 35-year career started with the Ministry of Transport in Auckland in 1981. His father told the Herald that it was John’s “fascination for motorcycles that probably swayed him [away] from stepping into a blue uniform”. Eventually, he would don blue, after the two services merged in 1992.

In 2002, he was named Nelsonian of the Year and then in 2012 he received a Queen’s Service Medal for services to Police and the community. On receiving his QSM, he told The Nelson Mail: “I hope that other police officers who have a passion for working in the community will see that your efforts do make a difference.”

Paul joined Police in 1973 – eventually serving more than 25 years – and was one of his father’s pupils on the detective qualifying course. He worked in Auckland at the same time as the two Patricks. In 1999, Paul and his team received a Silver Merit Award acknowledging their leadership, attention to detail and investigative abilities. It could be said, Paul had a good teacher.

Michael joined Police the same year John hit the road for the MOT. He was awarded the Baton-of-Honour as top of the Prince of Wales Cadet Wing, the first cohort at the new police college in Porirua. Michael went on to serve for almost 30 years in Auckland and Northland.

Sister Jennifer was the last of the five siblings to join Police. She signed up in 1982, serving in Auckland and Christchurch before retiring as a detective about 15 years later.

Pat Junior’s daughter, Detective Constable Jessica Helen O’Donovan (who is married to a former police officer, whose father was also in Police) started out in 2007 as a Police communicator and then a dispatcher in Christchurch.

In 2011, the week before her constabulary career started, she found herself in Cashel Mall watching people die under tumbling masonry during the February 22 earthquake. After doing what she could to help amid the many aftershocks, she volunteered for duty in the comms centre. Jess later followed in her father’s (and many other O’Donovans’) footsteps and joined the CIB before she resigned to start her family.

Pat Jnr was the last to leave the service, retiring to, literally, greener pastures in late November.

So, the long, long blue line has come to an end. Eleven O’Donovans, five generations, with more than 270 years of Police service. “It will be strange knowing the family line has ended, but all things come to an end,” Pat says.

The memorabilia recounting O’Donovan policing in New Zealand is now in the hands of recent retiree Pat O’Donovan Jnr – or “Groundskeeper Willie” from The Simpsons fame as he refers to himself after a day of mowing lawns on his daughter’s 530-acre property.

He deserves the quiet life. As well as working in team policing and as a homicide detective in Auckland, Queenstown and Christchurch, he was involved in many of New Zealand’s seminal moments over the past 45 years – Bastion Point, the Springbok tour, the Canterbury quakes and the 2019 mosque terror attack. He and his teams were recognised with unit citations for the latter two.

“It’s been wide and varied... very satisfying.” But not all roses: “I’ve had all sorts of things with the Police, spinal fusion after car crashes and I’ve fallen off mountains, been hospitalised many times.”

Pat joined the CIB in 1980 – “in the Peter Doone days, he was my boss way back then”. Years later Rob Pope shoulder tapped him to take over CIB training for the Canterbury District.

“I did that for 19 years. I was based in Christchurch and responsible for CIB trainees in the detective development programme in the South Island.”

Pat says there have been “huge changes” throughout his time. “You know, we used to have the gangs, gang wars and gang rapes and all that sort of stuff. But the violence nowadays directed towards police is far, far worse than what we used to deal with.

“That's reflected in the equipment our frontline staff have now... we went out with a little six-inch wooden baton, a pair of handcuffs and a notebook… They’re certainly far better equipped. We didn't even have radios when I started… It's still a dangerous job. But I think if you do the right risk assessment, then you can keep yourself pretty safe.”

The only time Pat felt constantly in danger was on entering Police’s central station in Christchurch after the February 2011 earthquake. “There were many times I went into the Christchurch Central, 13-storey building that I thought I was going to die during subsequent earthquakes.”

It was Pat’s work post-quake “that was probably one of the most satisfying things in my career”.

“I worked out at Burnham for about eight weeks running [disaster victim identification] teams. I wasn’t dealing with the body parts; I was working with investigators, interviewing family members and reconciling the property found to identify victims.

“We worked in this big, big old gym, out at Burnham. All around the walls were these massive, big whiteboards with the names of all the missing people. And every day we’d come in and you'd see someone else has been ticked off as being identified.

“It was really, really satisfying. I think, in the end, we only couldn't identify anything from one person. It was incredible.

“New Zealand Police does this sort of stuff so well. Get together diverse groups of people and work as teams or big teams together.”

Pat’s “team” is now wife Glenda, daughter Jess, her husband Mike, their sons Ben, 6, and Toby, 3, son David, his partner Kate and 6-month-old grandson George – and Pat’s loving it.