Mr O'Connor has spent the past five weeks travelling through New Zealand.
He was in Oamaru yesterday for an Otago Area Police Association meeting.
One common theme was the shortage of officers doing frontline response policing.
The basis of policing was the ability to attend to emergencies.
While officers in specialised areas did good work, basic frontline capabilities needed to be filled first, before the "extras" were looked at.
But the opposite had happened, he said.
With the "beating up" police had received over the past couple of years, officers were feeling unappreciated, although they were a "pretty stoic lot".
Mr O'Connor said that there were good people in the force, and he wanted to reassure New Zealanders that "good people" were still being recruited.
One of Mr O'Connor's tasks in Oamaru was to make a presentation to retired sergeant Derek Beveridge.
Mr Beveridge was presented with his 42-year star and bar at a farewell function earlier this year.
Yesterday, Mr O'Connor presented him with a miniature of his medal.
