36: On the Beat
What if we had more cops on the beat?
Isn’t it time the New Zealand Police started to recognise the changes happening in urban New Zealand? In our central cities and busiest town centres and main streets in particular, wouldn’t it be good to see less racing sirens and more friendly-faced officers on the street, on foot and two wheels?
This aspect of New Zealand life is a noticeable contrast with policing in cities elsewhere in the world. In central Auckland and Wellington in particular, there are now such high numbers of people out and about on foot every day and every evening right through the week that having a friendly police presence on the pavement wouldn’t go amiss, particularly at night.
The positive difference was noticeable during the Rugby World Cup where the police by and large had a very positive presence in the city. Ok, so that was a special one-off event with particular policing needs, but it did signal how too often we see officers out of their cars and on the pavement. As New Zealanders increasingly work out ways of to our urban city and town centres it might be time the police consider doing the same.
Stuart Houghton 2014
Processing...
We need Bobbies on the beat and civilian Nobbies in the office.
Come on Stuart! Our police would much rather congregate in large groups looking macho and menacing than show a friendly face to the public. The Dotcom and Ureweras debacles are just the most egregious examples of this.
When I have spoken to police in ones or twos around town (infrequently) I have found them to be polite, friendly and helpful. We need more of this: it is very reassuring to see police walking the street. It engenders an overall feeling of safety.
Health and Safety in the workplace, no way I could see them getting permission to walk around in ones! Pairs would be minimum. Have you been overseas? Would be interesting to see what you think of our police force after seeing Aussie, UK, US and everywhere in Europe that I’ve been. Very proffessional and non-violent in comparison. When speaking to them they are normally quite nice in the kiwi way too.
Although I respect it would be good to see them around more, we do need to use our resourses effectively, maybe when they got down time this would be a good time filler.
OK, sure. Our sexual assault and burglary resolution rate (both pretty bad, by the way) can suffer a bit if seeing uniforms walking around is a priority for you. Take THAT, litter!
I would like to think Police priority was in preventing and solving crime rather than smiling at tourists
Used to be that way throughout NZ. I remember as a kid in Gisborne in the 70’s, police used to walk in pairs around town, with those tall white hats! But it had to be phased out, as it is a very poor use of officers to restrict them to such a small area, unable to get to where emergencies are happening.
Who cares what the area is? Surely the fact a quarter million people pass through the CBD on an average weekday is more important than area. Emergencies happen to people, not land.
Great idea. Instead of the police focusing (or increasing) their efforts dealing with crimes that actually matter, we can have officers spending their days wandering the streets harassing people for things like crossing intersections against the signals (gasp!) and riding a bike without a helmet (shudder!) in order to justify their presence.
Maybe instead we could get security guards placed at some of the unlit back-alley temporary rail bus stops that AT are keen on. The one setup at Panmure station pretty-much all last year comes immediately to mind. Even as a male I hated using this stop at night.