Almost a year after the Otago and Southland specialist drink-drive road policing units were disbanded, one of the police managers entrusted with what remains says it is still too early to tell if the restructuring has been a success.
The Southern police traffic alcohol group and rural drink-drive teams were disestablished on January 18, and absorbed into the road policing sections in each area.
The decision followed almost unanimous opposition by affected police staff, who noted other police districts, such as Canterbury and Waikato where specialist drink-drive units were disestablished, later reinstated their rural-drink team.
Southern road policing manager Inspector Tania Baron, who was quoted at the time as saying the restructuring was to ''enhance our deployment to intelligence-identified risks'', said in late November it was ''way too early'' to tell what effect the move was having on driver behaviour or crashes.
Figures could be affected by so many variables, including petrol prices and weather patterns, she said.
In her view, the restructuring was now embedded and the majority of staff accepted it.
''We still have a couple that perhaps are not entirely happy.''
In North Otago, the restructuring has meant an increase in dedicated road policing staff, from two to three.
They make up part of a team of 12 assigned to in the Otago coastal area, covering from Owaka to Omarama and inland to Clinton and Middlemarch.
The district's police governance group believed the restructured team was the best way to deploy the resources it had and there were people who ''struggle with the change'', Insp Baron said.
Police districts throughout the country were observing the effects of the restructuring.
''Some aspects of what we've done other areas have picked upon, but not in the entirety. This is something the Southern district initiated themselves.
''The way we were structured was put in place about 15 years ago, maybe longer. It wasn't fit for purpose. A lot of things have changed in this time.''
Some of those changes were a rise in visitor numbers to the area and an increase in calls from motorists on the road about bad driving they observed.
''We weren't well positioned to respond to that.
''We have to be flexible. Sometimes, members of an organisation struggle with that, but we have to make a difference.''
She added that road policing was not treated as a specialist area by the police but aspects, such as serious crash investigation, were.
