Detective Alan Lee said mental health issues "tied us up a lot" and occasionally police had to drive tourists or residents to Dunedin or Dunstan hospitals in the middle of the night for treatment.
Detective Alan Lee first came to Wanaka in 2008 to work on the front line.
He moved to Alexandra soon after to work as a detective and returned to Wanaka police station as a detective following a restructure a few years ago.
In his 11 years in Central Otago he had seen Wanaka evolve from "a two tourist seasons a year" town into almost a year-round tourist town.
In that time "family harm" had remained a constant issue, but traffic had increased "four- or five-fold", he said.
"Police were having to respond to road stuff all the time."
He said no particular case stood out in his memory, but one of the biggest positives in being a policeman in Wanaka was the search and rescue operations.
"Even though we sometimes have to pull a few bodies off mountains or out of the lake, it is a really good community initiative and extremely well supported."
Detective Lee recently turned 50 which he found "a bit confronting", but said he planned to stay at the Wanaka police station for the foreseeable future.
