Police Commissioner Andrew Coster stands by how his officers conducted themselves during the operation to bring an end to the anti-mandate protest.
The stand-off on Parliament grounds came to an end last Wednesday after 23 days.
“I don’t take too much pleasure from the way things finished. None of us wanted that kind of ending but I’m incredibly proud of the way our team deployed. You will not see a more professional, restrained, courageous response to a situation than you saw there this week,” Coster told Q+A.
The Police Commissioner said he is "incredibly proud" of how officers conducted themselves during the Parliament protest.
“We pursued a path of de-escalation over the previous week … and we made real progress with that and that work really allowed us to get to a stage where we could be confident of being successful this week.”
Coster said while officers worked with protest leaders to “try and restore order to the area”, it soon became clear that they were unable to do so.
“As that situation became worse, the mix at the protest changed. We saw some of the original crowd leave and we saw people come in who appeared to be there more for defiance and to fight rather than the original issue.”
it began as another normal day and ended in violence.
He said the tensions within the group were becoming “increasingly tense”, and the aggressive behaviour towards passersby continued to escalate in spite of the high police presence.
“There was low-level violence towards people in the area, we were getting increasing complaints about the way people were being spoken to and treated as they passed the site so it was only a matter of time before we had violence, I believe, between groups inside that protest area.
“This lines up with our experience with other occupations - they do not improve with age. Eventually, they decline into disorder and we could see we needed to act.”
Coster said watching the stand-off unfold from the command centre was “very unnerving”.
Police Commissioner Andrew Coster says there cannot be a recurrence of the occupation.
“The level of violence that we saw when people started lighting fires, there were some moments that were really touch and go within that protest but what we saw was incredible teamwork by our people, a very restrained use of tactics.
"I think there was remarkable courage shown when you consider the threat that they faced from that crowd."
Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins was one of the few people in the Beehive when the operation to end the protest took place.
He told Q+A he felt a mix of "anxiety and sadness - real sadness, actually".
"There were some people out front who I think didn’t know what they had gotten themselves into and I do feel for those people. They’ve fallen down a rabbit hole, they’ve believed some things that weren’t true, they’ve been sucked in by some people who were very persuasive and I think it was very, very sad to see them, at the end, really bewildered by what was going on around them," he said.
One female police officer was hit in the chest by protesters throwing rocks.
Hipkins called the scenes in front of Parliament "pretty confronting and pretty anxious".
“When they were burning rubber and things like that, there were periods where you couldn’t really see what was going on down below and that thick black smoke was getting up and surrounding the building and that was pretty confronting ‘cause we just didn’t know what was going on out the front at that point."
Coster said while police "didn't get the peaceful resolution that we hoped for ... at least we were able to get the numbers to a point where police could resolve it".
The Prime Minister said she was deeply saddened to see Parliament “desecrated” by the violence.
"I have been overwhelmed by positive, supportive messages from the public about our approach to the situation, throughout and the resolution on Wednesday ... My sense is that people are hugely grateful for the way this was managed, and I'm confident that we did the best that we could."
Coster said reviews into the events will be carried out in due course.
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