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When Inspector Dave Gaskin walks out of Timaru Police Station on Sunday, it will signal the end of a 45-year career with NZ Police, he sat down with reporter Yashas Srinivasa to talk about his career, the highs, the lows and the cases he will never forget.
When Dave Gaskin joined the NZ Police as a 20-year-old he did so having already held a strong interest in the force – he leaves as the country’s longest serving area commander.
“I grew up in a provincial town in New Plymouth. I had spent a long time involved in search and rescue up there, and as result met a lot of police officers.
“I was at a crossroads in my life, looking for something to do, and when the opportunity presented itself I grabbed it with both hands.”
Gaskin describes himself as being a “very mature” 20-year-old when he started at police college.
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Halfway through his training he was told he would be posted in Wellington, but by the time he graduated from police college that had changed to Timaru.
Gaskin started in his first role in Timaru in December 1977, and spent three years in the town before transferring to Dunedin where he met his wife, Linda, who was also a police officer.
“I was there till 1987. When I was qualified for a promotion I applied for a number of sergeant jobs and I was lucky enough to land one in Timaru.
“In 1992, I went to Christchurch as a Senior Sergeant, before returning to Timaru in 1985, and I’ve been here since. I’ve been an area commander since 1997 when the area was restructured from a district to an area.
“I’ve been the only area commander they have ever had here.”
In his time in the role, Gaskin said he had attended numerous “horrific” incidents, but the death of a team member during a training exercise would stick with him forever.
“The one event that influenced my career, more than any other, was when I was in Dunedin. I was the police liaison officer on the Otago Alpine Cliff Face Rescue team, and we did a training exercise with the team in an area of the Temple Valley (North of Lake Ōhau).
“On that exercise, the team leader fell off the cliff and was killed.
“When the incident happened I was with some very experienced climbers who were incredibly competent, but the decisions and the leadership fell immediately to me as the only police officer present.”
At that moment, Gaskin went from being a team member to a team leader.
“I found that quite difficult because I knew the guy, but also it was also quite rewarding that I could manage their resources from that point on.”
He says there have been plenty of cases that have bothered him, but the unsolved murder of Ashburton teenager Kirsty Bentley tops that list. Gaskin said he has kept close tabs on the case, as he had staff working on the case.
He said a number of people had gone missing in the Aoraki District during his tenure, but the disappearances of Graham Salmond, an 80-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer who went missing in January 2003, and Temuka teenager Yuri Santana are two cases he would not forget – as both families never received closure.
In 2015, the discovery of the remains of 19-year-old climber David Erik Moen – who was caught in an avalanche near the top of the Tasman Glacier on September 16, 1973, brought Gaskin great satisfaction.
He said he was proud to be part of the introduction of restorative justice programme Project Turnaround, in Timaru, in 1996.
“We have done some fantastic things … I look at some of the things we have done for our community (which) have been picked up and mirrored.
“Like the restorative justice process, we set in place here with Project Turnaround.
“We turned a lot of crime around. People were moved away from crime and given second chances. That was a brilliant concept.”
Gaskin said he was also proud of his work targeting gang operations in the early 90s, when Timaru had long been known as the “gang town” of New Zealand.
“That was an operation that was not only a police run operation, but the community were very involved in it, and now we’ve got Operation Cobalt which mirrors what we were doing 30 years ago.”
However, he said there were areas which required focus and there was not enough community support for people who struggle with mental health issues, alcohol and drug addiction.
“There are some good pockets available, but unfortunately we do not have a lot of depth in what is available locally.”
Staffing is a big challenge for police in the Aoraki District, and all provincial New Zealand, he said.
To go forward in the organisation, one has to move around and that’s a negative for a lot of people because they’ve got families that have settled in a community.
“You’ve got the people who’ve settled that want to get promoted but probably won’t because they won’t be prepared to move and there are others who come in as a stepping stone to move on. So it’s getting the balance right.
“You’ve always got to have people who will are only here for a short time because that’s contributing to the betterment of the organisation, but also having a good pool of people who want to be police officers in Timaru.”
Gaskin said he had seen “massive changes” over his years with New Zealand Police and the culture of the organisation had completely changed since he started.
“Not only with acceptance of different ethnic groups and sexual orientation, but also the gender balance is completely different and the way we treat woman in the police is significantly better.
“I remember when my wife, who is also a police officer, and I had our first child, she was told she could come back to work full time on shift or don’t bother coming back at all.
“Nowadays we’ll bend over backwards to accommodate women returning to work which is fantastic and is what we should be doing.”
Gaskin said he was pleased there had been a drop in the crime rate now compared to when he started as area commander, which he attributed to increased employment.
“There is no excuse for anyone, who wants to work, not to have a job.”
“We’ve got a good local government who have been very proactive and very positive.”
But, he said there were still too many people dying on our roads – and that presented a real challenge. “Its such a needless waste, and unfortunately the needless waste is generally in the young people with so much to offer.”
In 2011, Gaskin was recognised with a Queen’s Service Medal for services to police and search and rescue.
“Search and rescue is very much my passion, and it has been all my life. It was good to be acknowledged by not only by my organisation but my peers as well.”
As he looks ahead to retirement at his home in Twizel, he said he still hoped to use some of those skills as well has helping his children.
“I’ve got a passion for search and rescue, and I’ll probably be doing some work around that.”
He said his decision to retire was one made jointly with his wife, Linda Gaskin, who retired from her role as a police officer last week.
“It’s absolutely the right time for us to retire, but it’s also the right time for the Aoraki area to have a new area commander.
“We made the decision at beginning of the year.”
Gaskin said he would miss interacting with people, both his staff and the community.
“I’ve had a close contact with many community groups over the years,.
“Being a police officer has been a large part of my life and will continue to be a large part of my life.”
Gaskin said the best lessons he had learnt were the importance of being humble, acting with humility and trying to understand where people are coming from.
“I’ve dealt with people in times of grief, in times of happiness, in times of sadness and in times of conflict.
“Sometimes we get wrapped up in our own world, and we don’t look outside and try to look at something from another point of view.”
Ideally, Gaskin would have liked to see his replacement put in place before he left, but that appointment is yet to be made.
“I think having a resident officer in Timaru is important and being available for your staff. If my staff want me in the office ill come in the middle of the night.”
The best advice he had received was from an older constable when he first started working in Timaru, who told him “’you have one of the greatest powers that anyone has in the country, and you have the ability to take away someone’s liberty. Use it wisely’.”
And that’s the same message Gaskin would share with aspiring police officers.
“If you use it wisely, and be fair and honest, and you’ve got empathy to both victims and offender, you can’t go wrong.”
Gaskin was farewelled at a celebration at the Timaru Police Station on Friday, with police officers standing in a guard of honour as he walked out.
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