The detective inspector will begin a new tenure as the district manager of criminal investigations in the Eastern police district on January 11.
He finished work yesterday.
As the Southern district manager of criminal investigations, he has overseen a wide array of cases since he began working in Dunedin five years ago.
He said this week he had been impressed by the quality of investigations carried out by the 73 CIB staff in the Southern district.
As examples, he cited the guilty pleas of Jarrod Mangles for the 1987 murder of Arrowtown woman Maureen McKinnel, Shiloh Rickards for the 2007 murder of Vicki Telfer in Dunedin, Wayne Patterson for the murder of Michael Hutchings near Balclutha in 2008 and Karl Rouvi for the murder of Moana Aranui in Dunedin this year, all of which were as a result of the calibre of work put into the investigation, he said.
"It is just sad to know that in nearly every [homicide] case, the victim has known the offender."
The successful arrest of Rickards after a 36-hour manhunt, which ended in him being bailed up in a shed in the back yard of a student flat, stood out in his mind as being a particularly well-managed operation.
While much of his work was at a policy and strategic level, he oversaw the bigger cases.
Two of the bigger challenges were the David Bain retrial, which he oversaw from the time the retrial was announced in 2007 and through the three-month retrial this year, and the trial of Clayton Weatherston, which followed soon after.
He will return to Hawkes Bay, where he was head of the CIB for five years, before he spent five years as the New Zealand police liaison in Thailand.
He then moved to Dunedin and had enjoyed living in the city, becoming immersed in the community through his involvement in Rotary and the Dunedin Rugby Club where he managed the premier team.
Dunedin was a great city, with great people and a lot going for it, he said.
He and wife Viv had thrown themselves into the area, travelled extensively, and enjoyed many of the outdoor activities the South had to offer.
However, Hawkes Bay was still his home province and he was looking forward to his return.
The district was similar to Southern in that it was geographically challenging, stretching from the East Cape, through Gisborne, Napier and Hastings and south to Takapau near Waipukarau.
The population was slightly smaller at 190,000 people.
One of his early tasks would be the inquest into the death of Senior Constable Len Snee, who was killed by Jan Molenaar during a siege in Napier earlier this year.
Asked if policing was any different there, he said crime was the same everywhere.
"It's no different than in any other area."
Det Insp Pinkham's replacement is likely to be announced later this month.
