All agree: fatten thin blue line

More feet on the beat is the slogan for New Zealand First's police policy, which promises to double the number of frontline staff within five years.

NZ First is one of a number of parties this election who are promising to get tough on crime and boost the number of police, in particular frontline staff.

Policing numbers is arguably the crucial law and order issue. Without adequate numbers, police cannot reduce and solve crime.

This year the Police Association has been pushing the issue and has been running a campaign called "Fund the Frontline" to get 540 extra police in the next two years.

This month's edition of the association's magazine Police News carries an election special informing the 9900 police staff about the parties' policing polices.

The association's president, Greg O'Connor, said what police were looking for was a party that was not only promising to boost numbers, but also had an understanding of where the problem lies, namely in the frontline.

This week Labour announced its fifth election pledge, which is to double the number of community police, to a total of 500, by 2008 at a cost of $25 million a year.

Mr O'Connor said the association applauded Labour's initiative.

But he said it would be ineffective without first increasing the number of front-line staff as the community police would be pulled in to plug the gaps.

New Zealand First, Act, National and United Future all have promises to boost police numbers. Act said its research showed there were 180 police for every 100,000 people in New Zealand, while Australia had 220 per 100,000.

The party said in its first term it would employ 2500 more officers at a cost of $200 million a year.

National also said New Zealand was well behind Australia on a police-to-population ratio and said it would remedy this over time.

But the party will not say by how much it will increase the force, saying if it forms the next government it will consult the police commissioner to decide policing numbers. In Police News National said it had budgeted for a substantial increase in frontline staff.

United Future also uses the comparison with Australia in its policy and said New Zealand had one of the worst police-to-population ratios in the Western world.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Helen Clark said parties' promises of thousands of new police were not credible because the police college did not have the capacity and the current labour market conditions meant such numbers could not be recruited.