Te Puke Times: Night Owls tighten screw on thieves

DETERRENT: Night Owls Geoff Mutton, Alan Cotter and Ginna Day are keen to help Te Puke residents protect their vehicles from theft.

If you want to protect your vehicle against theft, Te Puke's Night Owl community patrol volunteers are keen to help.

On Saturday November 22 a group of them will be stationed at the Countdown supermarket carpark on the corner of Queen and Boucher Sts. And in turn for a gold coin donation, they'll insert a special screw in your vehicle's registration plates that makes it impossible for even the most determined thieves to remove the plates and put them on another vehicle.

Te Puke Community Patrol chairman Geoff Mutton says money raised from the project, which has the full support of the police, will go towards the ongoing costs of mounting regular patrols around the town and surrounding district and maintaining the organisation's patrol vehicle.

Night Owls patrol the town each night of the week, acting as additional eyes and ears for the police.

The daytime patrol uses a vehicle sponsored by Trustpower and checks out areas where crime has or could be a problem. The aim is to help local police in making Te Puke and the surrounding areas a safer place to live.

However Geoff says the organisation urgently needs more volunteers and welcomes inquiries from anyone willing to devote two hours of their time every four to five weeks, to helping their community.

Not just anyone can become a Night Owl volunteer though. Umbrella organisation Community Patrols of New Zealand says applicants are vetted by police before becoming patrol members and must complete about three months' training, where they work with senior patrollers.

Members must sign a declaration of confidentiality and agree to abide by a code of conduct before working with the patrol.

Geoff says Te Puke once had 80 or 90 volunteers but the number has fallen in recent times and more help is urgently needed.

"Patrols can be covert or overt, and volunteers usually go undercover at night, when they patrol the town area and get specific tasks from the police."

Daytime patrols cover as far afield as Pukehina Beach and Papamoa Hills Regional Park, both of which can sometimes be trouble spots, says Geoff.

"If there have been burglaries in any particular area we alert residents and we paint over graffiti too. There was a drop in the amount of graffiti in Te Puke over the last couple of months, but just lately there's been a spate of it."