Patrollers get home base close to action

The Wanganui Community Patrol is thrilled to have a new base close to Mainstreet action.

The group has two rooms next to Mainstreet in Ridgway St, where it will hold meetings, including community gatherings.

The rooms have yet to be connected to a telephone line that will be linked to the police.

Wanganui Community Patrol (WCP) chairman Warwick Laws said during the day the rooms were purely a base, as any of the rostered 50 volunteers would be out patrolling the Wanganui streets in their high-visibility jackets.

The volunteers had two cars, each with a radio that operated under the WCP call sign. The volunteers worked nights from 9pm-2am under police direction to report criminal activity and where possible, record car registration numbers.

When they went on patrol the volunteers reported who was on duty to police communications in Wellington.

In the patrol cars, which were signwritten with "Prevention", were two fixed radios connected to the police frequency band, and the volunteers also had hand-held radios. Mr Laws said those were their biggest tools on the street. Community patrol volunteers were vetted by the police, with one or two assessed to a higher standard to perform other tasks.

A good night was a quiet night where there had been little or no criminal activity in the city.

Mr Laws said community patrols had been working nationwide for 12 years and worked in partnership with police across New Zealand.