Volunteers from Tūrangi community organisations including Coastguard Tūrangi, Police, Tūrangi Community Patrol, Civil Defence, Land SAR, St John Ambulance and Tūrangi Fire Brigade. Photo / Supplied
Volunteers from Tūrangi community organisations including Coastguard Tūrangi, Police, Tūrangi Community Patrol, Civil Defence, Land SAR, St John Ambulance and Tūrangi Fire Brigade. Photo / Supplied
Kia ora koutou. I'm happy to report it's been a pretty quiet time in Tūrangi recently. Our strategic crime (things such as burglaries, thefts from cars and stolen cars) has been pretty low. The only thing that has remained consistent is family harm, with similar numbers of incidents being recordedeach week. We are doing a lot of work on this, both the police staff who attend the initial calls and our dedicated family harm constable, Sally Tai-Rakena, who works with our other partners and support agencies.
Last week was National Volunteer Week so it's a great time for me to give a shout out to all the volunteer organisations who make our town a better place to live. From Land Search and Rescue to Coastguard Tūrangi , Neighbourhood Support, the Tūrangi Fire Brigade, Tūrangi Community Patrol and Tūrangi Blue Light, St John Ambulance and others, all these people and organisations really are the glue that hold communities together. Our community can't exist unless we have our volunteers and we are lucky enough to have some amazing volunteers here. We are also grateful for the support of their employers, who allow them to shoot off, sometimes at very short notice, to a rescue on the lake or in the bush, or to fight a fire or help somebody in distress.
Volunteering doesn't have to be onerous or time-consuming. For example, at Tūrangi Blue Light often all we need is just a few adults to come along on our trips so that we have the correct adult-child ratio for safety, especially when we're around water.
Sergeant Te Reipa Morunga, Tūrangi Police. Photo / NZME
Some of the stuff our volunteers do also actively helps prevent crime. For instance, our community patrollers are out there keeping an eye on what's going on around town and we also have our Blue Light driver navigators who teach rangatahi to drive so they can pass their learner and restricted licences. The local schools have jumped on board with us and we had 19 rangatahi through the Tūrangi Blue Light driver navigator programme last year. All but one of them have now sat their restricted licences and of the nine that enrolled this year, three have already got theirs. So, that's 22 young people who are now licensed to legally drive who may not have otherwise been. We know that a criminal record often starts off with drivers' licence offences so if we can help the people get driving legally then it will also help divert them from heading down that path.
If you're interested in lending a hand with any of our local community organisations, we can help put you in touch. Drop into the Tūrangi Police Station and we can send you in the right direction.
