KEY POINTS:
An extra 200 police officers from the United Kingdom and a smaller number from Hong Kong and Singapore are to be recruited as local police struggle to meet new frontline targets.
Their recruitment advertising campaign is under review as are training rules to ensure recruits whose second language
is English are not being set up to fail.
New Zealand First negotiated an extra 1250 police by 2009 in its confidence-and-supply agreement with Labour at the last election - 1000 of whom will be dedicated to "frontline" policing.
It means this country will be policed more heavily on a per head of population basis - but less heavily than several comparable countries.
Police human resources general manager Wayne Annan said sworn police officer numbers were up to more than 8000 - a milestone, with the induction of 72 new recruits this week.
That followed last year's Budget provision for 406 extra officers - the first tranche of the 1250 extra staff - and by June about 70 extra officers will be posted in the Auckland district.
Police Association figures say the ratio of sworn police per head of population was 546:1 in June 2006 - a figure set to improve to 518:1 in June.
At the same time, concerns were raised this week about some recruits starting work without having passed all training requirements.
Because of low unemployment police were struggling to find recruits, Mr Annan said.
"In the Auckland area, we are meeting that challenge by substituting with overseas recruits."
Since 2003, 230 officers have been recruited from the UK.
"Between now and June 2008, about 200 more officers will be recruited from the UK."
Problems attracting Asian staff is behind an "embryonic" plan for a "low-level recruitment from Singapore/Hong Kong".
Initially, the plan involves hiring about 20 highly experienced officers from the two countries.
It is aimed at increasing recruitment among the Asian population and is also designed to trigger a culture change within police as it is "a different community than we have historically been used to policing".
The Asian community now accounts for about 10 per cent of the population, but only 1.4 per cent of police identify as Asian.
There are similar but less marked discrepancies with other ethnic community representation.
Mr Annan said there were other problems involving English as a second language that need to be addressed.
This revolved around recruits' command of English in high-stress situations, such as high-speed driving and violent arrests.
Police were considering a range of options to tackle the problem, including "giving people a longer period of time to do training in those areas".
The cost of recruitment has gone up from $1 million to $3.4 million during the past three years and is set to increase again.
Despite higher levels of unresolved crime in Auckland City and Counties Manukau - 37.5 per cent are resolved as against the national average of 44.2 per cent - they are not projected to get major staff increases this year.
