Table of Contents
Lucy Rogers
11 March 2026
Detective Superintendent Kylie Schaare
kylie.schaare@police.govt.nz
Refusal to conduct investigation
I write in relation to the New Zealand Police’s refusal to conduct an investigation into the contents of my complaint dated 27 November 2025 about Inspector X’s and Senior Sergeant Y’s failures to adequately investigate my complaint about my arrest on 25 November 2023.
I might understand the police’s decision if the refusal to investigate my complaint was due to concerns about the on-going civil proceedings I am taking in respect of my arrest, although even that is problematic for all sorts of reasons. However, D confirmed to me yesterday that according to her understanding the police are refusing to investigate my complaint at all, whether before or after judgment is issued in the civil proceedings.
Not interviewing the complainant is the most fundamental investigative failure that there is. Not only that, but not a single one of the police officers who arrested me and lied about me was interviewed either. This is problematic, not only because the officers were not asked questions, but also because formulating interview questions would have forced Inspector X and Senior Sergeant Y to engage with the written statements of the officers in question. Instead, they overlooked stark inconsistencies both with footage of my arrest and between the statements themselves. If that were not enough, I have identified 26 other errors with the investigation also.
If my case does not merit an investigation into the PPC [police professional conduct] failures, respectfully I struggle to conceive of a case that does. Inspector X’s offer to meet with me following the conclusion of the civil proceedings to (in D’s words) “provide responses to [my] concerns over the investigation” is no substitute for a rigorous exploration of what went wrong by someone independent. Inspector X and Senior Sergeant Y have a conflict of interest in determining what constitute errors and what do not, and the degree of seriousness which should be attributed to those errors. For example, it is not for Senior Sergeant Y to decide whether his relationship with Sergeant Robert Bourne (whom the IPCA found to have lied about me) constitutes a conflict of interest.
If I made errors of this magnitude at work I would lose my job. That is not necessarily what I want to happen to Inspector X or Senior Sergeant Y: in fact I do not. I am not in the business of destroying other people’s lives. What I want is for the police to take this seriously. It is perhaps little wonder that a culture in which such serious shortcomings are tolerated has developed within PPC if in cases like this the police refuse to even look into it, let alone reprimand the officers involved. I also doubt very much that most complainants when treated as badly as this are as persistent as I am, meaning that PPC gets away with it without even being forced to this point most of the time.
I note also in passing that it is appalling to me that whether or not the original investigation into whether Senior Sergeant Vaughan Perry and the other officers who arrested and lied about me will be reopened is apparently dependent on adverse judicial comment. I am confident that I shall win my civil case; however, even if I were to lose, given the sheer inadequacies of the police investigation it ought to be reopened regardless of the High Court findings. The investigation appears to be being treated as having been robust, despite the fact that the police response to my letter dated 27 November 2025 says that you do not have an official position on whether my arrest was justified or not and/or whether the police officers who arrested me lied about me to justify it (and also in spite of the fact that the Crown just made me a settlement offer in the civil proceedings).
I note that the possibility of an IPCA investigation into what went wrong is not a satisfactory explanation for refusing to conduct a PPC investigation, because the police informed me that you would not conduct an investigation prior to being told whether or not the IPCA intended to investigate. Furthermore, I consider the police’s response to any IPCA findings on the matter to be a foregone conclusion if PPC does not itself investigate.
I ask you once more please to consider conducting an investigation into the errors made by Inspector X and Senior Sergeant Y following the conclusion of the civil proceedings. I have appealed to the IPCA to consider ordering you to do so; however, the IPCA has deferred that decision until the case is concluded. If you will not reconsider, I request please under the Privacy Act 2020 explicit confirmation that you will not investigate following the conclusion of the case.
Ngā mihi
Lucy Rogers
