Environmental Variables: Population, Officer Numbers and Who Faces Lethal Risk?

To help analyse the levels of lethal risk faced by police and traffic officers, it was important to consider key variables that impact. This chapter details how the national population of Aotearoa New Zealand grew over the decades from the late 1800s to the second decade of the 2000s. This chapter also tracks the growth of police and traffic officer numbers over those same decades using official sources, or – where those were missing – extrapolating the numbers based on historic movement. The concept of who actually faces lethal risks in a policing environment is also revisited and the detail of how the author arrived at a 75% baseline figure for staff is discussed along with the official data inputs.