Editorial: Rural police districts wrong target for sales

Opinion

Labour's law and order spokesman Clayton Cosgrove clearly hit a raw nerve recently when he suggested the Government was about to close police stations in outlying townships. The Prime Minister responded promptly that no such thing was planned, and nothing would be done that jeopardised the safety and security of New Zealanders.

John Key's instincts were right. The Government would be inviting a fight if, in the interests of cost-cutting, it embarked on the wholesale disposal of rural police stations and housing.

The previous Government learned this only too well when it threatened to close a large number of country schools.

Hopefully, however, Mr Cosgrove was wide of the mark in his interpretation of a Cabinet paper to the Police Minister that discusses the sale of stations and police houses as part of a Government-ordered line-by-line review of costs.

While further savings in addition to the chopping of 10 per cent of the police's car fleet are being sought, rural districts must surely be largely off the agenda. The local police officer should remain part of the fabric of such communities, even if dollars and cents have led to the withdrawal of the likes of banks and post offices.

Thousands have learned the art of policing as sole-charge officers in small towns. There, they bond with law-abiding members of the community and come to know the subtleties of applying the law.

An incident three years ago, in which an off-duty policeman in Mokau was acquitted of a drink-driving charge after racing to the scene of a fatal crash, underlined the manner in which the police serve such communities.

The closure of such stations would clearly present logistical problems, not least in the speed of response.

Sales should, therefore, be contemplated only in the case of settlements that are not particularly isolated and have suffered steep and terminal population declines. Such communities have disintegrated of their own accord. The withdrawal of a police officer would not be a catalyst for further decline.

In other instances, however, the lack of police protection close by could be a disincentive for many people pondering a shift to a rural district.

Purely from an economic perspective, there is, in any event, no great incentive to sell stations or houses in such areas. Their value is considerably less than property in more populated areas. The amount gained would be outweighed by the worth of maintaining a police presence. That, in turn, indicates the likely cost-cutting focus. This must be on police stations that are so close to others that closure would have little impact.

Examples in Auckland are the stations at Ponsonby and Newmarket, which are within minutes of Auckland Central police station.

The operations of such stations reflect their relative unimportance. Ponsonby and Newmarket are open only from 8am to 4pm on weekdays. Shutting them would create neither undue inconvenience nor jeopardise the safety of the public.

Even better, their sale would yield millions of dollars. Ponsonby is valued at $1.78 million and Newmarket at $2.19 million. There are likely to be similar if somewhat less wealth-enhancing scenarios in the likes of Wellington and Christchurch.

If such is the police thinking, it would be part of an ongoing rationalisation, rather than the traumatic closures foreshadowed by Mr Cosgrove.

The police are under pressure to make savings, and some of the 220 buildings owned by it aside from stations will doubtless be part of the same programme. Unused buildings will not be missed.

But, as the police themselves acknowledge, they must be careful. On no account should public access to the police or the standard of policing be compromised.