Anna Lorck
It's time to take a small, but important victory for the "little guy".
After months of community pressure, started by the residents of Clive and surrounding areas, the Eastern District police management have outlined some of its plans for change in Hawke's Bay.
I would go as far as to suggest that if it hadn't been for Clive's Ted Tobeck, who started protesting loudly against the closure of his community police station - the public would still be in the dark.
When you are the "little guy" and people begin to join you, it starts to matter because people power puts decision makers on notice.
When significant changes are happening in the community, we have a right to know.
On the face of it, the announcement that Hastings and Napier will get new police stations is good news. But let's be very very clear - it was an absolute necessity because the existing buildings are old, substandard and earthquake risks.
So while the Eastern District's police management focused on announcing two new police stations it was the underlying message from the top brass that started to spell out what really lies ahead for our police.
In two years from now, we can expect all the community police stations throughout our region will be closed and community policing, as we have known it, will be gone forever.
It is apparently part of the plan for creating a better, more efficient police force, and these community stations are never really used anymore.
It has nothing to do with there being fewer police doing more and more, with no time to have a base - than the need for community policing.
The centralisation to the cities is a loss for our rural communities, villages and small towns and is another example of the "little guy" losing what were once regarded as vital services.
Now while the new state of the art cop shops are being built, the public will get to see a whole lot more of our police because they are going to move out of cities and whole team units will be based in community stations around the region.
This will, I imagine, create a false sense of security as we start seeing more of our local officers around town, we will almost feel spoilt that our police are so visible, we might even get to know their names. But in two years time they will be packed up and move into new HQ.
And then what?
The other thing the public learned this month was how down in the dumps our local police are feeling.
Our Hawke's Bay police force has the lowest morale in the country - they are stretched to their limits and all the warning signs are showing things are reaching breaking point.
The latest police workplace staff survey for Hawke's Bay has uncovered a growing culture of mistrust and uncertainty and our local police tell us that the single biggest factors needing to change to make the force a great place to work are management and resources in staffing level.
This survey is only real insight the public get into what was happening behind the scenes.
If our local police don't trust what they are being told from the top, how on earth can the public?
While the public is starting to find now what lies ahead, the warning signs are saying all these changes are not necessarily the right way to go.
Are we just going to say goodbye to community cops " policing and crime has changed so much that we no longer need you?
Is mobile policing really going to work for the future, sending car loads of cops out to where the crime has already been committed? And so the irony in all of this is very few of our hard working police on the beat will be spending much time in their flash new digs.
-Anna Lorck is Labour Party spokesperson for Tukituki.
-Business and civic leaders, organisers, experts in their field and interest groups can contribute opinions. The views expressed here are the writer's personal opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz. -Viewpoints on the amalgamation debate can be submitted for consideration and will be used as long as no council resources, money, time or expertise are used in their preparation. This is a requirement of the Local Government Act 2002.