The man they call ‘Grins’ was looking relaxed and living up to his nickname this past week - his final one in the police force.

Senior Sergeant Allan Grindell is hanging up his baton after 42 years in the NZ Police. His career has spanned a time of enormous change in the force, and Allan was there for much of it - including on the frontline with the Blue Squad during the 1981 Springbok Tour, and in the thick of Wanaka’s boozy New Year’s Eve days in the 70s and 80s.

Allan has six months of long service leave ahead of him (some of which will be spent having knee replacement surgery and recovering) which takes his final official day close to New Year’s Eve - one of the first since 1976 he won’t be working.

Born in Invercargill, and educated at Otago Boys in Dunedin, Allan joined the force when he was just 18. The question of ‘why’ stumps him a little, but he said he always wanted to stop "the bad guys”. And it’s ended up being quite a career.

He recalls the recruiting sergeant telling him "you’ve got more than sawdust in your head”, and remembers having to strip down to his shorts in order to - just - meet the weight requirement.

There were 119 raw recruits in Allan’s intake. "They were the days of huge recruiting, 300-400 cops a year.” He was one of the youngest in his wing at Trentham, and his first posting was on the beat in Wellington Central in 1976-77. There were plenty of old pubs, sly grog dens, and stripper clubs - and lots of assaults. "It was a good eye-opener. Quite an exciting place for a young man from Dunedin.”

He transferred to Dunedin later in 1977 and worked on the frontline, team policing. Mass disorder was one of the issues the team dealt with - perhaps good training for what followed in 1981: the Springbok Tour, when Allan was picked for the Blue Squad, which escorted the Springbok team around the country.

As a keen rugby player Allan went into the tour thinking "politics and rugby don’t mix: the game must go on”, but the tour was "an attitude changer” for him.

"By the end of the tour I’d changed my mind on that.” Particularly significant was the test match in Christchurch, which was "like a war zone”. "There were 5000 protestors lined up across the road. We moved forwards into them and we batoned those people in the front line. That wasn’t a good feeling.” He said the protestors were not the usual types he dealt with, people being arrested for assault, but ordinary Kiwis protesting something they felt strongly about.

"It really tore New Zealand apart. New Zealand never wants to go through that again.” The police would have been lucky to have reached 50 percent support back then, he said. "It took us a few years for the police to get over it.”

Back in Dunedin, he was dealing with the "mundane: burglaries, assaults, and so on”. By 1986 Allan was back in Wellington - "the big smoke” - promoted to sergeant. It was a busier place by then, and gangs were a big factor. He remembers a gang member murdered on the street and guarding the body while his colleagues kept other gang members back.

A young white boy from Invercargill didn’t get any special training for dealing with different cultures. "I don’t think diversity was something we considered. Now it’s a big thing in the police - ethnicity and gender.”

"I’ve seen massive changes in the police force - huge. We always talk about our values - professionalism, integrity, respect. We try to refer back to those values.”

Allan has also been part of the Combined Investigation Unit in Wellington Central, dealing with serious crimes, and in the team policing unit - wearing riot gear, policing the pubs and gangs and dealing with street disorder, armed with just a wooden truncheon and handcuffs.

By the early 1990s he was back to Dunedin, the 24/7 supervisor based in the station, "in charge of the town at night”. Orientation Week and the Undie 500 were big issues, and by 2005 the power of social media was becoming clear. That year he and his team cleared Castle Street of students, and they returned with trebled numbers. "I think I started the riot actually.”

By the early 2000s, the policing model changed from reactive to a crime prevention model. "The model we have now is ‘let’s stop it before it happens’. Once people get into the justice system they’re in it for life.”

In 2009 Allan moved to Wanaka. The recession was starting to hit and a lot of tradies were leaving town, Allan said, but there was no real serious crime. There still isn’t, according to Allan.

"Wanaka is a safe place. Safest place in New Zealand, I reckon.”

Increasing tourism and more people arriving are causing more issues, such as vandalism damage and more drugs. "There are lots of drugs in this town,” he said. While there is some crime associated with it, such as drug driving, "what we don’t see here is a lot of downstream crime. I suspect it’s because there’s a bit of wealth in the town.”

Close to half of Wanaka’s police work is around road policing, but it’s not just the foreign visitors, he said. "We see some horrendous New Zealand driving.”

And of course there are the alcohol issues. This is an area in which Allan would have liked to have done more work before he left the force. "Wedding season [November-January] is huge,” he said. "They all arrive in town about midnight. Many of them are fine, respectable people who are liquored.”

There’s a lot of work to do with stakeholders in the wedding industry, and the local bars. "A liquor accord is a possibility. A one-way door at 1am is another.” But he compares it to the bad old days, such as his first New Year in Wanaka in 1977. "Every window in the THC [now the Bullock Bar] used to get smashed. They used to arrest 30 people in one night. By the time the pubs closed at 3am the street was awash with bottles and cans. New Year’s are quite good now.”

He would have liked to have spent another 12 months here, but his knee replacement is looming. "Stations this size need all the police to be fit,” he said, and "in fairness to the station and the community” he feels it’s time to go.

"I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘love’, but the police force has been a great career for me,” he said. "I still get up on a Monday morning and want to come to work. Motivation isn’t an issue for me.”

He’s leaving the Wanaka police in pretty good shape, well-off for staff and efficient with deployment. One of his last duties this past week was accompanying the family of the young Taiwanese woman who was killed in a car accident on the Wanaka-Mt Aspiring Road late last month to the site of the accident. Friday was his last day, and on Monday Detective Senior Sergeant Malcolm Inglis will be "warming his seat” while a replacement is found.

Allan has no firm plans for retirement, he says, but after knee surgery the golf course beckons, and he makes a surprising admission: "I’ve got an interest in drinking wine.” He has done some viticulture papers and wonders whether "wine tourism with an ex-cop would appeal”. Well, he’s good company, has an amiable grin and plenty of interesting experiences and stories, so why not?

PHOTO: Wanaka App