Police phone system slammed

A two-hour delay getting police to what could have been a serious incident involving a child outside a Wairarapa primary school has sparked criticism of a new telephone system that routes police calls through Wellington.
Featherston School staff phoned police after reports a pupil was being hit in the back of a car outside the school grounds before the school day starting, but hours passed before the incident was investigated.
Yesterday, principal Phil Robertson confirmed the incident that came to public notice when South Wairarapa Mayor Adrienne Staples included it in a report to her councillors.
Mrs Staples said, given the school was " just round the corner" from the police station, the delay seemed "ridiculous".
She made it clear this incident, and others that have been documented in South Wairarapa, was not criticism being levelled at Wairarapa police, but of the phone system that has stripped away personal contact.
The issue had been raised at a meeting of the Southern Wairarapa Safer Community Council on March 8.
It was not an isolated incident, Mrs Staples said.
The council's stock ranger Judy McLaughlin had sought police help when she discovered stock wandering on the road at Hinakura but could not succeed in getting through to the local constable by phone.
During the Easter break a party of protesters had set up camp in the middle of Featherston, lighting an illegal fire.
Mrs Staples said attempts to have them moved on by police stumbled when local police could not be contacted.
"What is the point of having local police if you can't contact them?"
Mrs Staples said in light of the recurring problems she wanted to see a return to the days when South Wairarapa people could phone the police station in the town they lived in, and get a response from someone they knew.
Councillors said it appeared the only sure way of getting a police response was to drive to the police station or the homes of police staff "and knock on the door or window".
Mr Robertson said, as it happened, the incident at Featherston primary had turned out "not to be a false alarm, but one that didn't need further action to be taken".
He said the school had "the odd occasion" when phoning police was needed but in recent times that had been a "waste of time".
"You can never get them."
Mr Robertson said he, too, blamed the new phone system, and not local staff.
For some the close call outside Featherston School rekindled memories of the tragic death of South Featherston schoolgirl Coral Burrows, over four years ago. She had been taken to school by her stepfather, Steven Williams, who attacked her in the car outside the school gate, then drove her elsewhere and killed her.
Williams is part-way through a lengthy prison sentence for her murder.
Police began a trial in November that directed phone calls from lower North Island stations to a call centre in Wellington.
At that time Wellington emergency response manager Inspector Kevin Riordan said call centre staff numbers and services had been improved in Wellington to cater for extra calls "which is designed to improve the response we give to the community".