Public funds, police PTSD, and a silence campaign

This is the fourth time the Police ACC provider has tried to silence us.

Let’s call this what it is. These are public funds. Public levies. Public responsibility. Yet a big business holding big contracts and handling big money keeps reaching for legalistic letters whenever we challenge shortcuts in mental injury rehabilitation.

We challenge them because we see what happens when cost containment is dressed up as “process”. We see the rushed assessments, the opaque decisions, the revolving-door case management, the pressure to fit traumatised people into tidy boxes. We pull those shortcuts up — over and over — and the response is not care, correction, or accountability. It’s intimidation by letter.

We see you.

You don’t see the mentally injured police workers who’ve served New Zealand and now carry the cost of that service in their bodies and minds. You don’t sit with their families. You don’t hear the 3 a.m. phone calls. You don’t watch someone’s confidence collapse because a system meant to rehabilitate them treats them like a liability.

Many of these police workers could have been treated early and supported back to work. Instead, too many are leaving the police service because the trauma is now entrenched, and the rehabilitation pathway has been destabilising rather than healing. Some are suicidal. All of them deserve better than a contractor trying to gag lawful advocacy.

And this is happening right after the McSkimming governance failure, when New Zealand has fresh proof of what defensive systems do to vulnerable people. Police could do without this spotlight, but here it is — because integrity failures don’t disappear by threatening the messenger.

We will keep going. We will keep operating lawfully. We will keep speaking up for the people who can’t fight this system alone.

The flak starts when you get close to the target.

Why we’re riding for hope — and how you can help

This is exactly why we’re Riding for Hope: to stand with police workers and police families living with the cost of service, and to push back against systems that fail them.

We need your help to keep this work going. If you can, please sponsor our ride here:https://hope-ride-for-police-families.raiselysite.com/

Every sponsor helps us stay beside mentally injured police workers, protect lawful advocacy, and drive the reforms needed to reach zero police suicides.