Police response to Christchurch massacre was 'exemplary'

The New Zealand police response to the massacre at two Christchurch mosques in 2019 was "exemplary," but could be improved, an independent review concluded on Wednesday.

The review was published by the independent debrief panel. It found that over the first 48 hours of police operations:

• "New Zealand was kept safe and order was restored;"
• "The largest ever criminal investigation was well managed;"
• "The process of returning bodies to their families was set in place with remarkable speed."

The New Zealand Police (NZP) had acted in response to an attack by a white supremacist that left 51 people dead and many others injured.

The panel judged that the NZP handled events "with professionalism, courage, compassion and cultural propriety."

Some room for improvement

But it wasn't all praise. The panel went on to say that it had "identified processes and systems that could be improved if such an event were to happen again."

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster acknowledged that concerns had been raised by families and victims regarding the police's response.

"We want to be as open and transparent as possible about how we conducted our operation," he said.

He added that police would work with members of the Muslim community to implement the recommendations of the report. One of the problems highlighted by the report was the understaffing of family and ethnic liaison officers who were unable to respond to the sheer volume of information requests.

Second report in two days

The review came one day after the publication of the larger judicial inquiry by the Royal Commission into the events which concluded that the massacre was "unpreventable."

The report was more critical of the focus of security agencies on Islamist terrorism at the expense of other emerging threats and produced a series of recommendations to help better deal with these problems.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern accepted the report's suggestions. New Zealand police said they would consider the review panel's recommendations as part of the government's response to the Royal Commission's report.