Kia ora koutou. We have Labour Weekend coming up and with it there will be more people around our area, although probably not as many as we would normally expect on a long weekend.
We noticed the school holidays were quieter than usual in town without the Aucklanders and visitors from Waikato around and fewer of our holiday houses around the lakeshore settlements being used.
What we also unfortunately noticed over the school holidays was that our family harm incidents went up which wasn't great, especially as a couple of these incidents were quite serious. These are mainly locals involved and our staff, including family harm officer Constable Sally Tai-Rakena and our support partners and agencies will be working together to bring these numbers back down.
In some family harm situations we noticed people haven't called us when they need help or have left it late to call. We need to remind people that you should call Police straight away if you see something or hear something so that we can get in there early and sort things out before the situation escalates. If you are in a family harm victim's circle of friends or family and things aren't going right, try to get some support agencies or partners around them. There are plenty of people they can speak to, we've just got to find the right ways for them.
