Stuart Nash: Community policing is under-resourced

Labour MP for Napier Stuart Nash

It is going to be a rather long election if Napier's National candidate David Elliott continues to write uninformed articles and passing the content off as fact (letters, Saturday, June 17).

Those who know me or have followed my campaigns over the last three years will be aware that one of the issues I have run extremely hard on is the value of community policing, and the fact that we haven't got enough of these officers in Napier.

Not living in the electorate, Mr Elliott is possibly unaware of the extent of the campaign I have run regarding police resourcing in Napier.

A bit of history: in May 2016 the then Minister of Police Hon Judith Collins signed off on Police Four Year Plan 2016 - 2020 which noted that the number of sworn officers was going to remain stable at 8907 through to at least the end of 2020.

As Labour's police spokesman, I thought this was unacceptable.

Crime was increasing and all indicators pointed to the fact that the police were extremely under-resourced and not coping (ref 2016 Police Workplace survey where 60 per cent of police said they were not delivering on the promises they made to the public and 55 per cent said that they experienced an unacceptable level of workplace stress).

So my team and I went very hard in the media and in Parliament to get this decision reversed.

Within eight months, National had gone from "no more police for four more years" to their first election announcement of the 2017 campaign being a promise of 880 more sworn officers over four years.

I put this complete change of heart down to the work that my team and I did both in Parliament and around our communities.

I make absolutely no apology for the fact that if I am Minister of Police I will channel significant police resources into two specific areas: community-based policing and the Organised Crime Squads (whose primary responsibility is going after the gangs that peddle P into our communities). Both areas are woefully under-resourced.

I totally buy into the police strategy of 'prevention first', but I contend that unless the balance between crime prevention and resolution is right, then policing effectiveness with be sub-optimised.

This is not simply me interviewing my typewriter, but rather having read widely and extensively researched police best-practise within the developed world and then applied it to the New Zealand context. I have also consulted with police at a number of levels within the organisation.

I personally know a number of our community-based police and they do a fantastic job keeping our communities safe, but, by their own (private) admission, they are totally stretched to breaking point.

Meth has spread like wildfire throughout our cities and the police are really struggling to keep up; let alone get ahead. In fact, between 2015 and 2016, Hawke's Bay experienced the highest percentage increase in burglaries in the country.

For Mr Elliott to say that I lack an understanding of police work, highlights the downside of not living in the electorate.

I have made it my professional business to gain a wide understanding of the role of police in society and how to best deploy scarce resources in order to both keep our communities safe and put the bad guys behind bars.

This is my promise to the people of Napier.

Stuart Nash is the Labour MP for Napier. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz.