NZ Detectives by John Lockyer

Author:John Lockyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742287645
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2010-11-19T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Overseas Assignment

At the end of her primary school years, Cushla Watson was asked to complete a leaver’s form. There was a section titled: What do you want to be when you grow up? Cushla wrote ‘policewoman’. She has no idea why.

After secondary school, she went into the Air Force. Three years later, an Air Force colleague told Cushla she wanted to join the police. Cushla remembered her early ambition and went along to the recruitment office, too. That year, there were six other women in the same intake as Cushla. The following year the police recruit course accepted 20 women.

Cushla Watson was in the police for 20 years. For a time, she was the only serving female detective in Wellington.

I was introduced to the CIB very early in my career. I was working in Tauranga. A small station; the only policewoman. I’d taken over from another policewoman, so I pretty much continued her role which was youth aid work and talking to students and other groups about the police. But every now and then I was asked to join a detective when he was interviewing a woman. So I knew a bit about the work.

Tauranga was a nice place, but a bit small. I wanted to experience the variety of work that happens in a large city. I couldn’t get a transfer to Auckland, so I took six months’ leave and went overseas. When I returned I was posted to Wellington. 1976. After six months of working mostly in the control room, Ted Lines asked me to help out with a CIB case.

A woman in Karori had complained about a man harassing her. Continually phoning her, making sexually explicit comments and pestering her to go out with him. Ted wanted to set him up.

The next time the man made contact, the woman arranged a meeting. On the day, in a wig and clothes the woman said she’d be wearing, I turned up at the meeting place – a known road in Karori. I wasn’t alone. I had one detective on a motorbike behind me and another along the street up ahead.

While I waited, I saw the guy drive past a couple of times, then he took the bait. He swung in close to the footpath and stopped. To make doubly sure it was the right person and not someone wanting directions, I asked him some specific questions. It was him. Then, instead of getting in the car I dropped some keys on the ground – the signal for the others to move in and arrest him.

He was an easy catch. I think the charge was offensive behaviour. And later that year I applied and was accepted for detective training.

I was the only woman on the course. And apart from Jean Dougall who was a detective inspector and the highest-ranked woman in the CIB, there were only one or two other working woman detectives. But that didn’t bother me. I just absorbed everything. We had fantastic, experienced lecturers and speakers from outside talking about stuff I couldn’t wait to be part of.

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