The sudden lockdown in Auckland over the weekend was accompanied by checkpoints on the city’s boundaries to stop non-essential movement through the region.
Newsroom’s co-editor Mark Jennings was one of those caught in a queue that trapped some people for up to 10 hours.
The main police checkpoint on the southern border of Auckland on Sunday was a farce.
Despite the experience gained from enforcing earlier lockdowns, the resources committed to the checkpoint on State Highway 1 near Meremere were woeful and dangerously inadequate.
We (my partner and her teenage sons) were among the thousands returning to Auckland after a weekend away. Google maps was showing a two-hour delay when we hit the line of stationary traffic just south of Hampton Downs at 3.16 pm. While we occasionally inched forward, Google’s estimation of the delay didn’t reduce, in fact it went up. It would be exactly four hours later that we made it to the checkpoint. Four hours to get approximately 10 kilometres.
What we witnessed in those four hours was worrying and distressing. Two ambulances weaved their way forward, their lights flashing for an eternity in our rear vision mirror.
When we eventually crept past one, we could see a distressed man being treated in the back of the emergency vehicle. Was it a medical event? Maybe it was dehydration brought on by being without water, or at least enough water, for four hours on a hot afternoon.
People in older cars, cars without air conditioning, were finding the ordeal almost unbearable. Parents could be seen lifting babies out of their carseats and walking along parts of the highway trying to console them.
Children and adults walked up and down the highway’s pullover lane as the line of cars remained stationary for long periods of time.
It was dangerous. Cars, either looking to beat the queue, or exit off into a side road, came, without warning, along this unofficial third lane. A motorcycle roared along it. What happened when they reached the checkpoint? They certainly weren’t turned back.
Drivers annoyed with what they perceived as uncourteous, and possibly reckless, behaviour, tried to block the “cheats lane”. A milk tanker in front of us succeeded in doing this for a while until the traffic began to move and it pulled back into one of the two proper lanes.
People of all ages were climbing over the barriers and up into the bush embankments to go to the toilet.
What were the elderly or those with a disability supposed to do? I don’t know.
Information seemed scarce. The only road sign we sighted until right at the checkpoint was one warning of queues ahead. A scan of various news sites suggested that police wanted proof of residence in Auckland. The articles suggested showing a utility bill at the checkpoint. I found a power bill in my email on my phone.
Eventually, two lanes merged into one and we moved slowly for another kilometre before it opened into two lanes at the checkpoint. Unbelievably, there were just eight or maybe 10 police officers present. Even more staggering was the question. “So just heading home are we folks?” A simple “yes” would have seen us waved through. I held up my phone from the front passenger’s seat, thinking there must be more to this, “What’s that, a bill?” asked the officer. There was no way he could see our address on the small screen but he thanked us and we drove on.
So this is what we had queued four hours for? We felt lucky, thousands of cars stretched as far back as we could see. Some ended up queuing for many more hours than we did. And for what? Others who were also trapped in the queue confirmed to Newsroom that the checks were, at best, cursory.
In a media release put out around midday on Monday, police said they had processed 25,000 cars through the northern and southern checkpoints and turned away 263. That’s a touch over 1 percent.
Sure, it makes sense to check people leaving Auckland, but inconveniencing close to a hundred thousand people to stop a tiny number trying to get into a lockdown, doesn’t make sense.
And what were the police doing? There are 2800 police in greater Auckland district and nearly 3500 if you add in the Waikato district, yet there were only eight to 10 at the main checkpoint? The delays started early in the day so this wasn’t a case of a sudden and unexpected build-up. The Prime Minister told morning news programmes on Monday that the army had been sent in to help but at 7.15pm on Sunday there was no sign of any khaki uniforms at the main southern checkpoint.
It might be fair to argue that the two lanes on either side of the highway at Auckland’s southern boundary make it hard to have efficient checkpoints, but if that is the case then a better system needs to be found.
Police, in the media release, acknowledged motorists for their patience and co-operation, but fiascos like Sunday must be avoided if they expect the steadfast compliance of most New Zealanders to continue.
