On this day back in 2012 there was no great fanfare, it was straight to business on the night Wellington hosted the premiere of The Hobbit. In classic New Zealand ‘she’ll be right’ style volunteers were called for, no experience necessary, and training was limited to “you’ll pick it up as you go along”. That first shift was pretty scary knowing the safety of international celebs was in our hands. But it was also fun, especially having a bird’s eye view of the stars!

The Camera Base now has 46 carefully selected and well-trained volunteers. We are very proud of the training and mentoring given to the volunteers before they go solo, and also of the ongoing learning opportunities provided such as; Imagery Analysis, Gang Awareness, Police 101 and Multiple Screen Usability. But the real stars are mostly definitely the volunteers, collectively contributing 403 hours of monitoring time per month for the Police.