Children from low-decile schools in Porirua are being given new opportunities to learn outside the classroom thanks to a fund set up to commemorate local-boy-turned-police-officer Derek Wootton, who was killed on duty 11 years ago.
Derek was working the night shift on 10/11 July 2008 when he was called on to lay road spikes following sightings of a car stolen after a serious assault and carjacking. He was hit as the car went over the spikes and, despite the efforts of colleagues and paramedics, died at the scene.
Last week the Derek Wootton Memorial Trust gifted $6000 to Porirua’s Te Pahi bus service, set up two years ago to enable students at lower-decile schools to travel free on the sort of school trips enjoyed by many others.
The donation brings to $125,000 the amount the Trust has disbursed since being set up by Derek’s former colleagues.
Trustee and colleague Inspector John Spence said he and a few others set up the Memorial Trust in 2009, to commemorate Derek’s service to the Porirua community where he grew up after his family emigrated from Britain. The Wootton family travelled out on the same ship as John's family, who settled in nearby Tawa.
“I believe Derek started out as a milk-boy in Porirua,” John says. “He was well-known in local sports circles, as a rugby coach and player, a member of the local RSA, and had done most of his policing there.
"We wanted to do something to honour him in a way that would continue to benefit his community.”
They started fundraising, chiefly through an annual golf tournament, and initially invited applications for grants from local young people.
Trustees then moved into paying the fees for two students at Whitireia Polytech but John says now they have 'found' Te Pahi, they will keep donating as well as helping them with grant applications to other agencies.
Porirua City Council spokeswoman Wendy Barry, who organises the bus for 26 local schools, says it makes a massive difference to local students’ opportunities for education outside the classroom.
“They might, for example, be learning about the Treaty of Waitangi," she says. "It’s a much richer experience when they can go and see it at the National Library. You can’t do that on YouTube in the classroom.”
The bus averages 25 trips a term, with 39 students on each. That's nearly 4000 kids a year.
Derek was also remembered at the annual memorial breakfast at the Royal New Zealand Police College when Assistant Commissioner Lauano Sue Schwalger laid a Police wreath at the Memorial Wall, alongside one from retired Detective Senior Sergeant Mike Oxnam for the Trust.
John also took the opportunity to remind the recruits, who marked the occasion with the Police haka, of the realities of policing. “That was the one bad day I have had with New Zealand Police.
“You need to focus on keeping yourself safe, and on your buddy. These things happen when you least expect them.”