A dedicated "tourist police" is being proposed to try to stem the alcohol-fuelled crime wave involving overseas visitors in hotspots like Queenstown.
A group set up to try to combat the alcohol problems say the proposed police offshoot would focus on tourists causing or becoming victims of crime.
It has been suggested the specialist tourist police could take on their own unique image like Bobbies on bicycles in the United Kingdom, or Canadian Mounties.
David Richards has been managing the Curbing Alcohol-Related Violence Project (Carv) in Queenstown, involving the local district council, police, health services and other agencies, and will be putting up an action plan at a meeting today.
The Queenstown Lakes District, with more licensed premises per capita than any other area, has earned the dubious title of the alcohol capital of New Zealand.
Visitors to Queenstown can swell the population by about 60 per cent on any given day. The result is that the rate of alcohol-related disorder is more than three times higher than the rest of the country.
Forty per cent of people arrested in Queenstown were born overseas.
"If there is an assault or a fight, quite often a visitor is involved in one side of it, if not both," Mr Richards said.
"[Queenstown] isn't resourced to deal with that sort of population increase or the particular crime that relates to it."
Other popular tourist destinations such as Rotorua could also benefit from a dedicated tourist police, Mr Richards said. "We think it would be helping crimes they are facing as well, because quite often they are victims as well as offenders."
Inspector Phil Jones, who oversees policing in Queenstown, said he saw pros and cons in a dedicated tourist police.
He had seen it working in places such as Santa Monica, Los Angeles.
"There is a negative in the fact the more you start differentiating staff in particular roles, the more people become quite specialised and it affects their ability to work in the wider sense."
Police's national headquarters would decide whether to adopt a plan and provide funding for the tourist police.
