Bring back community police stations

The Dinsdale crime meeting sparked a large turnout from the community, local government, candidates and members of parliament. Photo / Tom Rowland

More than 100 people packed into Aberdeen School hall on Tuesday night to hear from local councillors, MPs and election candidates respond to residents' concerns about increasing violent crime in the Dinsdale area.

Members of the police were absent, due to the meeting being considered a political meeting with policy not allowing them to be present, but they say they will work with residents after the election.

Dinsdale resident Noeline Jeffries organised the meeting for residents to create a committee that would work with local government and police to help create a safer community.

At the meeting, each member of the panel was given five minutes to talk about their views, with the message from local government representatives clear from the start: community police stations need to be reopened.

Councillor James Casson (a former police officer of 25 years) said that youth in his day benefited from early meetings with the police.

"When I was younger, I got called up by the local police officer where I lived, and I had broken a window, he walked me home by my ear and as I got to the door, he booted me in by the backside and said 'this is your boy, deal with him', and then I got another one from dad," Mr Casson said.

"The infrastructure is still there for community policing, the Te Rapa station still has a 19-year lease running on it.

"That kind of sorted me out from an early age, that shows the importance of youth having early contact with the police, and that's what you had with the community police around the city."

Mr Casson said the police are currently understaffed and across New Zealand this year had worked 290,000 hours of overtime to keep up with the demand.

Deputy mayor Martin Gallagher said the council wants to work with the police to get a good result for the community.

Hamilton West Labour Candidate Dr Gaurav Sharma also spoke about the need to get the police force back into the community.

"We need to make sure that our community police stations are open, we need to go back to the old system where the police officers knew what was going on in the community, and the community knew that officer," Dr Sharma said.

Hamilton West National MP Tim Macindoe acknowledged the call for community policing.

"There is a feeling that when a community policing is vibrant, when you know who they are and they know who could be a risk then good things can come of that," Mr Macindoe said.

"I hear that point, and that is something I will take away from this meeting and discuss when I next talk to [police] area commanders."

Mr Macindoe, however, said that as politicians, it is their job to make laws and resource police, but not their job to control the police.

"In a democracy where we respect the rule of law, it would be a really worrying thing if we tried to tell the police how to do their job, Mugabi does that, that lunatic in North Korea does that."

Mr Macindoe outlined the package that National had introduced this year, that will bring 101 police officers to the front line in the Waikato.

He also brought up the statistic that youth crime has fallen by 31 per cent since June 2011.

"That tells me that our police are doing a lot of things really, really well."

People in the audience raised issues around the lack of consequences for youth offenders and their parents.

"I think we need to go up to the parents of these bad children and children themselves and do something about it," an audience member said.

"That man there in the police force [Casson] said once upon a time we could kick them up the backside, we're not allowed to do that anymore. Children abuse teachers in school and they cannot do anything about it, what is going on in our society, don't blame the government."

Mr Casson agreed, saying there were not enough consequences for the young.