How a top New Zealand police officer's downfall provoked public fury and scrutiny of police powers

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — He was one of the most powerful police officers in New Zealand and a year ago almost won the country’s top law enforcement job. But the public didn’t know Deputy Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming was facing claims of sexual abuse during an affair with a young staffer and would soon be charged with viewing illegal sex images, including of child abuse, on his work computer.

The case has provoked public outrage and reignited a debate about police power two decades after a national outcry about how the force handled another young woman’s sexual violence accusations against officers. Since then, New Zealand's force has sought to reshape itself as a liberal and friendly law enforcement agency.

“This is a big hit to integrity and trust for the police,” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told 1News on Monday. “It’s got to be built back.”

Police bosses admit that won't be simple. A scathing watchdog report this month lambasted senior officers for minimizing the claims about McSkimming as he sought to become Police Commissioner. They instead pursued his accuser for online harassment.

A damning report found failings

The saga emerged in August when McSkimming was revealed to be facing charges of possessing child sexual abuse material and other illegal sexual content. He admitted some of the charges earlier in November.

Court documents said he viewed thousands of sexual images on work devices during office hours, including numerous illegal images. He will be sentenced in December and faces up to 10 years in prison.

During a period of four and half years, about a third of all McSkimming's internet searches during work hours were for sexual content, the documents said. At the time, he was the force's Chief Security Officer.

The images were discovered as investigators probed separate complaints made by a woman with whom McSkimming had an affair when she was a police employee. The woman, 21 when she met the then-40-year-old McSkimming, accused him of sexual abuse in messages to police bosses, politicians and news outlets.

McSkimming's peers believed his denials without question, according to a report this month by the Independent Police Conduct Authority.

The watchdog said police bosses tried to rush an investigation into the complaints because they feared it would prevent McSkimming from winning the top job, but the inquiry gained momentum when lower ranking officers challenged their bosses.

No charges were laid against McSkimming over the woman's claims, but investigators charged McSkimming's accuser with online harassment of him and other officers.

The charge of harassing McSkimming was dropped this month, but the woman remains before the courts on other counts.

“The way her complaints were handled should alarm all New Zealanders,” the woman’s lawyer Steven Lack said Tuesday. “It suggests that the police were more focused on protecting Mr. McSkimming’s career and advancement than on properly assessing serious allegations of offending against him.”

The case evoked a past outrage

The case prompted fury in New Zealand, in part because it evoked previous episodes of police sexual misconduct and cover-up.

“It was like deja vu,” survivor advocate Louise Nicholas said on Tuesday. “I was so saddened to see and hear, God, we’re going through this again.”

Nicholas became a household name two decades ago over her efforts to see police officers convicted of raping her, which she said began when she was 13. The Associated Press does not usually identify people who say they were subjected to sexual abuse, but Nicholas said she preferred to have her name used.

All of the prosecutions in the Nicholas case ended in mistrials or acquittals. One provoked nationwide protests when it emerged the jury hadn't been told that two of the accused former officers were already in prison for another rape.

The lead police investigator was jailed in 2007 for obstructing justice in the case, and the same year a searing report found widespread failures in police handling of sexual violence complaints.

Nicholas has since advised the agency on reforms and said much has changed, especially through employment of specialist sexual assault investigators.

“It’s not the New Zealand Police per se who have done this, it’s individuals within the police,” Nicholas said. “Those individuals have been held to account and perhaps others will be held to account as well.”

She urged prosecutors to drop the charges against McSkimming’s accuser, whom she said had been “tormented” by police inaction.

Police will face more scrutiny

The case reopened debate about an agency that has been seeking a fresh image with a so-called community policing model emphasizing diversity, unarmed officers and relationships with marginalized groups.

Several police bosses criticized in the report have left the force and two who now hold high-ranking roles at other public agencies have been placed on leave from their jobs. Two more have announced their retirements, and others still in their jobs face internal investigation.

Public Service Minister Judith Collins was asked by reporters if the episode amounted to police corruption.

“If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s not looking good, is it?” Collins said.

The officer who beat McSkimming to the commissioner job last November, Richard Chambers, has emphasized his outsider credentials since the scandal. He was posted abroad before his appointment, he told reporters, and has “no friendship” with previous police bosses.

The watchdog report made more than a dozen recommendations for the force and the government, all of which the parties have accepted. The government has announced the appointment of an independent Inspector-General of Police.

“It’s a pretty confronting, appalling, shocking, disgusting treatment of what happened to a young woman there,” Prime Minister Luxon said Monday. “That’s why we’ve gone as hard as we can, as early as we can, to actually say, we’re going to go to the highest possible oversight of police going forward.”

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