Acting Police Commissioner Viv Rickard confirmed today that the ¡®officers¡¯ on stage with singer Tiki Taane last night at the New Zealand Music Awards were in fact dancers and not Police.
¡°Mr Taane approached us a while ago and asked if some of our officers could appear on stage with him during his performance of ¡®Freedom to sing¡¯. While we were pleased to be asked, we are not able to facilitate those kinds of requests. However, we did approve the use of four uniforms for Mr Taane¡¯s dancers to wear during the performance last night.
¡°Congratulations to him for his awards, it is good to see him doing well.¡±
Mr Rickard said Police and Mr Taane had come to an agreement a month ago after a performance by Mr Taane resulted in him being arrested for disorderly behaviour.
¡°We worked through the matter and Mr Taane has now volunteered to be a family violence spokesperson in one of our districts and it is fantastic to have someone of his profile and youth to be able to connect to our communities about such a serious and important issue.¡±
ENDS
NB : It is an offence to personate a police officer. However, Police do need to be able to provide uniforms at times for filming or theatrical purposes. These requests are carefully considered on a case by case basis.
Tel: 04 474 8856 or 04 460 2986