Police Task Force searching for overstayers, near Gluepot Hotel, Ponsonby Road

These negatives were shot by Louise Lonsdale-Cooper (née Wilson) when she was a third year student at Elam, Auckland University School of Fine Arts, in 1974.

Prompted by Senior Photography lecturer and former Chief Photographer at the Auckland Star, Tom Hutchins, Louise began experimenting with night photography in her local environment. The challenge was to take photographs using black and white film carrying minimal equipment, so many of the images were taken without a tripod.

In late 1974, she photographed the Auckland Police Task Force by their paddy wagons one night, near the Gluepot Hotel, on Ponsonby Road, Auckland. They were searching for overstayers and targeting people from local Pacific communities.

Afterwards, she delivered prints to the Polynesian Panthers’ Central Headquarters at 14 Redmond Street. The Panthers invited her to return in December 1974 to photograph the families attending the Panthers’ Christmas Party.

Two of her night photos were published in the Panther's Rapp newspaper, issue No.1, 1975, in an article titled: ‘People Challenge Police Power’.

Police Task Force

The Auckland Police Task Force had been mobilised in 26 June 1974 by the Labour government in response to growing concerns about violence and other crime in the inner city. A disproportionate number of those arrested were Māori and Pacific Islanders, leading to criticisms and concern about racial profiling and discrimination (the Task Force wound down its activities in June 1975).

Polynesian Panther Party

The Polynesian Panther Party (PPP) was founded on 16 June 1971 by young urban Pacific and Māori activists, inspired by the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in the United States. The aims of the Polynesian Panthers were to highlight the needs of New Zealand’s growing Pacific communities, and the racism and discrimination they experienced. The Panthers informed people of their legal rights, advocated for tenants (leading to the establishment of the Tenancy Tribunal), ran food co-ops and homework centres, helped with prison visits, promoted Pacific languages, held concerts, and supported Māori protests. They exposed and worked to overcome the racial prejudice denying Pacific people equal access to education, employment, health and housing.

The Polynesian Panthers worked to end oppressive police tactics leading up to and including the dawn raids. The dawn raids were the Government’s promise to ‘get tough’ on law and order and immigration in the 1970s. Raids took place in the early hours of the morning or late at night when police would enter homes to convict and deport so-called ‘over-stayers’. Police also stopped people in the street to ask for evidence of their right to be in the country, but the majority of people targeted in this way were Pacific people, despite Pacific people making up only one third of those overstaying their visas. The majority of over-stayers – British, Australians and South Africans – were not subjected to the same demeaning treatment. The Polynesian Panthers provided legal advice to victims and formed the Police Investigation Group (P.I.G.) to observe and follow Police Task Force patrols and raids.