Car-less police catch trains

Police in Auckland are so under-resourced that one officer is forced to catch a train instead of using a police car.

The situation is so dire that last Sunday morning in South Auckland, there were no police available to attend 22 urgent crimes.

The Police Association has been pressing for increased resources and officers for frontline policing.

However, police from Auckland's three police districts told the Herald on Sunday there were sufficient staff allocated to deal with crime - including a boost to numbers on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

But Mark Leys, the Police Association regional director, said there were still not enough frontline officers - as shown last Sunday morning when 22 urgent calls for help had to be ignored.

Mr Leys, a Counties Manukau sergeant, said the 14 cars carrying frontline staff that night were assigned to attend 253 incidents in a six-hour time span.

Of those, 70 incidents were classified as "priority one" and were stacked up by the communications centre until police officers were free to attend. The response time to such incidents is meant to be 10 minutes.

"Priority one is when someone is getting the bash at the time," Mr Leys said. "These are live jobs with live offences. They had 22 priority-one jobs racked and stacked. We had 14 cars on air but they were busy as hell."

Mr Leys said even if there were extra officers available, there were not enough vehicles available to get staff to crime scenes.

"You can't put out one patrol until you get the car back from the other. Quite often in the change of shift we will have staff there twiddling their thumbs listening to racked and stacked priority-one jobs.

"Unless they're within walking distance of the station, and there's not much public transport at two in the morning, we just can't get to them. There are just not sufficient cars to deal with overlapping shifts."

Mr Leys, as a scene-of-crime officer, used the train himself to travel between two police stations and a caryard full of stolen cars as part of his regular working week. He collects details and evidence from the cars.

"I use public transport because I don't have a car available to me.

"If I used it I would then disable another patrol. I use the railway services. It does mean that while I'm sitting on the train, if someone's getting the bash somewhere between stops I'm blissfully unaware because there aren't enough portable radios to go around to provide me with one and even if I was ... well, I suppose I could get off the train and run."

Mr Leys said police assigned to the district had gone into gang, burglary, traffic and family violence units - "but for years no one has put more resources into frontline policing".

National's police spokesman Simon Power said a police officer catching a train to do his job was an indictment on resourcing.

He pointed to a recent Police Association survey, in which 96 per cent of staff questioned said they needed more resources.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY