Inside a 'cover-up': The top cops, the 'quasi investigation' and the officers who stood up

Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii

A damning report by the Independent Police Conduct Authority found serious misconduct at the highest levels of police over how they handled accusations of sexual offending by former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming. National Crime Correspondent Sam Sherwood reports.

Inside a scathing 135-page report into how police responded to accusations of sexual offending by former Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming lies a quote from one of the country's most senior adult sexual assault investigators.

The officer, named in the report as Officer D, but who RNZ understands is Detective Inspector Nicola Reeves, told the Independent Police Conduct Authority that the handling of the allegations prior to her involvement in the case was "appalling".

"We have just not followed policy whatsoever and it doesn't take a rocket scientist… Jevon has tried to get rid of this by making a complaint and … making [Ms Z] the villain, when in actual fact what he perhaps should have done was gone: 'Can someone look at this and investigate it and get it cleared up? Because I've got designs on the future, and I want my integrity intact, so I welcome an investigation. Let's get it cleared up, get it out of the way'.

"But you know what's the worst thing - if you make a mistake … the only worse thing that you can do is then cover it up…You can paint all sorts of nice words of this …but to an outsider looking in, and … I mean even me, this looks like a cover-up."

The woman referred to in the report as Ms Z was charged in May last year with causing harm by posting digital communication in relation to more than 300 emails she allegedly sent to McSkimming's work email address between December 2023 and April 2024. The emails included abusive and derogatory language directed towards McSkimming and other people.

With the release of the report, RNZ takes a look at how police investigated the woman's complaints and how in the words of Police Commissioner Richard Chambers she was "ignored and badly let down".

Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone

Operation Herb

It wasn't until about a month after Ms Z, a former unsworn staffer, was charged that former Deputy Commissioner Tania Kura decided police should explore whether any of the allegations in the emails were legitimate.

Kura spoke with Assistant Commissioner A, who was then the Assistant Commissioner of Investigations. The pair agreed to bring in Reeves.

"We involved her because we were concerned that if the allegations or the rantings that she [Ms Z] had put out there were actually true, she couldn't be pleading guilty to things that came about because she'd actually been a victim of some offences."

Assistant Commissioner A directed a colleague, Officer B to do the first draft of the terms of reference for the investigation.

Officer B told the IPCA both Kura and Assistant Commissioner A urged caution in the way the terms of reference were framed:

"Jevon's a very senior person in the Police and…if these complaints are made and then what happens is there's no validity to that complaint, someone's career is really on the line because someone made a complaint, but there's no substance. So it was about having the right care".

Kura told the authority she didn't approach it as an ordinary sexual assault preliminary investigation because of McSkimming's rank and the prosecution against Ms Z.