600 more frontline Police
National has released its policy on police numbers:
- recruiting and train 600 extra police officers from 1 January 2009. This is 224 on top of current plans.
- By 2011 having one police officer for every 500 residents, and keep this ratio as population grows
- 300 more Police in frontline roles in South Auckland (Counties-Manukau) by the end of 2010
- Cost $18.5 million
- Only 21% of new recruits under Labour have been allocated general frontline duties. All 600 under National will be allocated to the frontline with half going to South Auckland (Counties-Manukau).
- Roll out Canterbury’s persistent-offender programme, which targets crime families, to other districts, subject to a positive evaluation of the trial.
They also talk of focusing road safety on blackspots and at risk drivers, rather than blanket ticketing which has doubled under Labour from 560,427 to 1,038,109.
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Tags: National, Police
October 20th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Hey isn’t that like “policy” or something. You know what Labour says National doesn’t have while their own is too secret to share with us until December?
October 20th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Look, I applaud National’s response. There is a need for more Police, and kudos to National for attempting to address this shortage. However its not the real problem.
The real problem is the disintegration of morality under socialism. Unless we as a country start emphasizing the difference between right and wrong rather than constantly blurring that distinction, no matter how many police, things will not only fail to improve, they’ll get worse.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Once again, it is nice to see National moving in the general direction of the Family Party, although they aren’t promising as much. The Family Party policy is to:
- Match Queensland’s police ratio (1:424 population) by 2015 – ie an extra 1,700 police
- Look into separating the Police and Traffic departments again, to allow police to focus on solving crimes rather than having to act as traffic officers.
So National’s policy shows we could work with them, but their policy wouldn’t even achieve the same police:population ratio as the poorest ratio in Australia, and we won’t get them separating police and traffic unless Family is in there.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Dead right Redbaiter
October 20th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Jesus christ dennis get a grip, the family party isn’t on anyones radar and wont be a part of dick after the election.
I don’t care about their policies and neither does John Key.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Where are the 600 extra people going to come from?
October 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Murray, that all hangs on whether we take the Mangere electorate or East Coast Bays. Wait till we have polling data for those electorates and prepare to be surprised.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Deborah, that’s easy…from the Work for the Dole scheme
October 20th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I hope there’s a wholesale cull of the politicised upper echelons at the same time. Board should take a few minutes now to brush up his CV.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
its not the number of police… its letting them actually do policework!
not standing cops down on full pay cause some piece of shit made up a complaint.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Um, that should have read: Broad
October 20th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Despite DamnedAngry’s quick response, I think Deborah has identified the main difficulty with the policy. Police are having difficulty filling their present recruitment authorisation. I am not sure how successful the recruitment from Britain was either. Quite a few of them went back, disillusioned. There is a relatively small pool of people who meet the criteria for admission, and not all of those actually want to be cops.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
getstaffed
One would also hope that the useless Librarian Shelia appointed by Klark gets the boot.
Key should also make it a priority to go and talk with some of the recently retired senior cops and see what he has to do to tempt these men back into the force, we simply cannot afford to keep losing our more experienced police.
Nearly all of these men will say that while they still have/had a passion for policing it was the PC crap and lack of support that drove them out of the force.
I know staunch pinko cops that still say the very best minister of Police they have ever had was John Banks, they knew that Banksie would be right behind them and as long as they had not done anything wrong he (Banks) would always fight for them.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
One police officer for every 500 residents by 2011? Welcome to 1984 – it’s just 27 years late in arriving.
In the days when the police and I still talked to one another cordially, officers repeatedly told me that in any given suburb there’s probably eight to ten families who are the source of 80% of the crime. That’s the “mid level” stuff – not the unregistered car and not the occasional murder, but the multitude of burglaries, assaults, serious drug dealing, parties that degenerate into riots, and so on.
It’s no doubt these people who are targeted by the “peristent offender program” which National has wisely decided to expand (and I must acknowledge Labour’s role in commencing. Though considering this has been known for about as long as we’ve had police, why’d it take a party so long to cotton on?).
But why spend $18.5 million throwing more police officers into a system that doesn’t currently work? Target the recidivists and then see how many – if any – extra police are needed.
What say it succeeds, as we must hope it does, and crime drops significantly? No party ever proposes a reduction in police numbers. So, with nothing better to do, they’ll start petty harrassment of 480/500 people who aren’t doing much wrong. And of course some of those people will have to be charged and convicted in order to make it look as though the system is working.
An odd combination of clever thinking outside the box while allowing their knees to jerk in reaction to Act’s drum-beating on law & order. Full marks for focussing traffic enforcement on black spots, thus hopefully decriminalising thousands of otherwise law-abiding drivers.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Shifting police from revenue gathering to policing would be a good start. Shifting police from office work to police work would also help. Reducing bureaucrats in other government departments and putting the money into more police is also a good idea.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
Nearly all of these men will say that while they still have/had a passion for policing it was the PC crap and lack of support that drove them out of the force.
And the low wages. I know a starting constable gets a comparatively good wage, but it’s not so good for experienced officers.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
>
>>The real problem is the disintegration of morality under socialism
>
Redbaiter, this is SO TRUE!
But think of where it has come from and we can start to stop it! (almost an oxymoron that!)
We stop parents from impressing on their kids that there are painful consequences of bad behaviour.
We stop schools from impressing on their students that there are painful consequences of bad behaviour.
We stop the police from impressing on their youths that there are painful consequences of bad behaviour.
THEN we complain about all the bad behaviour on our streets!
RESPECT, Morals, consideration. All things that should be impressed on our society’s members from the earliest possible age, but aren’t. Yesterday I watched parents BRIBE a youngster to do what they wanted rather than scream down a public space. On Saturday I heard an old man tell a kid (maybe 14) to not throw a glass bottle on the street; the kid’s reaction – “why? What are you going to do about it?!
Enough! I like the idea of Boot Camp for thugs of all definition. I like the idea of two strikes and you’re out. Now if we can get the old fashioned concepts of family and family responsibility to society into the mix, there just might be a peaceful solution to the woes of our society after all; otherwise, the inmates will soon be running the asylum.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Rex Widerstrom (1439) Vote: Add rating 4 Subtract rating 0 Says:
October 20th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
“One police officer for every 500 residents by 2011? Welcome to 1984 – it’s just 27 years late in arriving.
In the days when the police and I still talked to one another cordially, officers repeatedly told me that in any given suburb there’s probably eight to ten families who are the source of 80% of the crime. That’s the “mid level” stuff – not the unregistered car and not the occasional murder, but the multitude of burglaries, assaults, serious drug dealing, parties that degenerate into riots, and so on.
It’s no doubt these people who are targeted by the “peristent offender program” which National has wisely decided to expand (and I must acknowledge Labour’s role in commencing. Though considering this has been known for about as long as we’ve had police, why’d it take a party so long to cotton on?).
But why spend $18.5 million throwing more police officers into a system that doesn’t currently work? Target the recidivists and then see how many – if any – extra police are needed.
What say it succeeds, as we must hope it does, and crime drops significantly?……”
Good posting, Rex. This is precisely how the NYPD under Mayor Guiliani and Commissioner Stratton DID get crime to drop significantly. Our trouble continues to be the “soft-on-crims” line of the liberal lefty “professionals” who infest our law and order system. They keep insisting that getting tough on crime has no effect on crime. In one sense they are right. The recidivist criminal who was programmed that way in the first 3 years of his life, will not be affected either by deterrence OR by rehabilitation (despite the trendiness of rehabilitation with those “professionals”). But OF COURSE crime drops when most of the people who commit it are locked up.
And Dave Strings, that is absolutely right. Charles Murray has been writing on social issues and the link between a society’s morals and crime, for decades. He has long warned that if we will not address the issue of children growing up without fathers, we will need to either live in fear of becoming the next crime victim, or we will need to become a police state with all citizens suffering restrictions of liberty, OR we will need to lock up lots of people.
The tone of resignation in his recent writings is saddening. He calls having large numbers of people locked up, “custodial democracy”; because society democratically chose the sort of leadership that is responsible for the social breakdown in the first place, AND society eventually democratically chooses the leaders who will lock the criminals up.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
There is as much wastage within the Police as there is in other Goverment Departments. The Commissioner is useless his procrastination over Tazers alone demonstrates just how useless. I doubt he has the confidence of his staff and how could a National Goverment have any confidence in him. Indeed the first thing National should do is examine some of the files of the ludicrous decisions adversely affecting them.
The Police need more precise powers to deal with problems more than numbers, and better procedures. Nothing will work for them unless the courts become more efficient with better procedures, less remands etc.
National have good law and order policies but unless the whole law and order process becomes efficient and seamless nothing much will change.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Yay… more prisons. Maybe we can beat America on our incarceration rate this election cycle!
Where the hell are the Nats getting all this money from? Aren’t they going to cut spending?
National is getting less and less consistent the more policy we see from them. Why can’t we have a normal, sane conservative party in New Zealand that won’t try and bribe taxpayers with their own money? Is that too much to ask?
October 20th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Until we have cops like the ilk of Gideon Tait running the show, the frontline police will always be disappointed, and crime will continue unabated.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:55 am
Gideon Tait, now thanks for that reference Paul Marsden, that is one great name in NZ Policing.