Airport police role - diverse and interesting.

More than 13 million travellers passed through Auckland Airport in 2008. The Airport police team based in the international terminal play a significant part in ensuring that those travellers, the people who deliver and collect them from the terminals, as well as the thousands of airport workers, are kept safe.

Photo captions: Inspector Mike Woods, who leads a team of 33 staff at Auckland Airport.

Inspector Mike Woods leads a team of 33 staff, who use a five-shift pattern to police an area which extends from Puhinui Road near Manurewa, encompasses the domestic and international terminals, retail and car parks, and carries on up George Bolt drive to the new Verissimo Drive Northern Car Park.

Weapons including firearms, imitation firearms, knives, knuckle dusters and drugs are regularly seized and destroyed.

Airport police have had a busy few months. The well publicised ‘baby in the bin’ incident and subsequent investigation and the impact of the swine flu operation which activated the Airport Emergency Operation Centre (EOC) has seen officers and police staff working at full capacity.

Despite having worked for 36 of the previous 48 hours Mike says he doesn’t think there is a better job in New Zealand Police.

“Airport police are the first and last police representatives people see as they enter and leave the country. It is important that we act as ambassadors for the service and perform professionally and effectively at all times,” he says.

Officers who work at the airport have to familiarise themselves with the warren of hallways hidden from public view. If required they need to attend control points to support colleagues from other agencies within very short time frames (within two minutes in some instances). They also need to know how to work safely in some fairly unusual environments including aboard planes.

An officer holds an ASP baton and nunchucku seized from a passenger in the domestic terminal. The cabinet contains other weapons seized from airline passengers. Photos: Anna Woolnough

Despite the specialist nature of much of the work at the airport, Mike is keen that officers take every opportunity to enhance their service delivery around NZ Police core aims of community policing and crash and crime reduction.

“In many ways we are a microcosm of New Zealand policing – the two terminals and surrounding retail parks provide a huge opportunity to practise community policing skills. “The importance of the working relationships we have developed with the Airport management and government agencies including Customs, Immigration and MAF, as well as the many retail outlets, can’t be over-estimated,” says Mike.

“The Airport Marae reinforces the need for us to keep Responsiveness to Māori at the forefront of our minds.”

Crash reduction initiatives are also important, as the roads surrounding the airports are main arterial feeds onto the motorway system. “The potential for problems is great, given the high number of foreign drivers collecting rental cars and encountering New Zealand roads, and occasionally the ‘keep left’ rule, for the first time.”

Security and combating terrorism is another arm of Airport police work and Mike and his team work closely with the airport, AMCOS, OFCANZ, Interpol and other government agencies to maintain security.

Having spent much of his policing career in the UK, Mike is well aware of the advantages of using an intelligence-led policing model to deliver service and together with his team has thrown himself into the work necessary to create a new intelligence centre at the Airport Police Station.

The threat of Influenza A-H1N1 has a far greater operational impact on Airport Police than it has on police elsewhere in the country.

At the end of May the Ministry of Health, although relatively reassured about the low levels of infection in New Zealand, reiterated its commitment to maintaining vigilance through the screening of international flights – given the continuing increase in the number of overseas cases being notified to the World Health Organisation.

The professional and dedicated response of his officers when the so-called Swine Flu was first identified as a potential threat to New Zealand, is a source of great pride to Mike.

“Early on we had no real idea how serious the threat was, but officers still took up their posts at the screening centre without a second thought.”

While police no longer man the control point on a full time basis as they did at the start of the emergency, the impact in terms of reporting to the regular meetings held in the EOC remains resource-intensive.