A Facebook page on which people post the locations of police checkpoints around Wanganui is "disappointing", a high-ranking officer says.
But Jeremy Cate, who started the "Wanganui Cop Watch" Facebook group on July 20, said it wasn't intended to condone drink-drivers but to "help protect those hard-working mums an dads that sometimes have to chose between a rego for the car or food for the kids".
The group has more than 690 members but, as of yesterday, no warnings posted about checkpoints. Mr Cate posted that was because old posts would be removed to avoid confusion.
He was not prepared to speak to the Chronicle about why he set up the page but said in a post on the site that it was doing what he hoped it would "for the resons [sic] outlined in my coment [sic] above".
Dozens of similar pages, with thousands of members, exist for many towns in New Zealand and overseas. Many of the pages state the aim is to prevent police "revenue gathering".
But Superintendent Carey Griffiths, national road policing manager, said these posts were "certainly disappointing, given that two New Zealanders on average die every week in crashes involving alcohol, and another 40 are maimed or left with other life-changing injuries".
"Anyone who encourages someone who may be drunk or drugged behind the wheel to avoid police detection should think long and hard about how they would feel if that person then went on to kill or maim someone in their family or one of their friends."
Mr Griffiths said checkpoints were operated in a range of locations.
"Their focus is on detection 'anywhere, any time' to remove drunk, drugged and dangerous drivers from our roads, before they go on to potentially maim or kill ... While we welcome the public being more aware of the risks around drink-driving, this [the web pages] is not the way to achieve it."