Following a review of Police station security measures signalled in September last year, a new set of infrastructure design features are being introduced to enhance safety at police front counters.
Assistant Commissioner Allan Boreham says the new features are designed to deal with the most likely threats at publicly accessible police premises.
“The safety of our staff, volunteers and visitors present in our police premises is of paramount importance and is a real priority for Police.
“While many of our front counters have some of the required infrastructure design features already in place, a number need enhancement and/or redesign and we have a project underway to develop a consistent nationwide plan to achieve this.
The review also highlighted a number of premises where more immediate practical steps were needed to increase security.
“There are 105 stations we have identified in this category around the country, which are typically smaller stations.
“Increased security measures we are looking at include issuing staff and volunteers in these stations with Officer Safety Alarms (OSA) as soon as possible,” Mr Boreham says.
Some Districts have also taken the opportunity of looking at kiosks which are only manned by volunteers and some of these will be closed until the completion of a more comprehensive audit as part of the project.
“We value our volunteers who perform many different roles for the organisation. We are not suspending our volunteer network but we need to ensure they are performing roles in a safe environment.
“We don’t want to make our premises less welcoming to members of our communities but we must do all we can to ensure our staff and members of the public are safe.”
Mr Boreham says other measures will vary from station to station, but may include positioning of CCTV to cover the entrance and front counters installation of duress alarms at front counters.
“In some of these stations one of the options may be to limit public access to times when constabulary staff are on the premises.
“This does not mean the stations will permanently close, but that public access at some stations may be, as an interim measure, restricted to those times when a constabulary/authorised officers is available to work at the front counter.
In Counties Manukau Police District, a decision has been made that volunteers will no longer be located in the station’s open reception areas but will now sit behind the front counter. This follows the assault of a Police contractor by a member of the public in the open reception area of the station last week.
“This was a terrible attack and we have a responsibility to ensure that our staff are safe when they are at work and we must take every possible precaution to mitigate the risk of this happening again.”
ENDS
Media contact: Ross Henderson, PNHQ Public Affairs, ph 04 470 7316.