Building Community Reassurance

Key Issue - Addressing community fear of crime perceptions and building reassurance through an increase of police staff in communities

Community policing takes time and long-term commitment, and once engaged there is a reasonable expectation from the community of police action on the concerns raised. This is an area where we assess we have lost ground in some metropolitan areas over the past decade, as we have focused on targeted crime reduction.

To emphasise this, we know that while people are often satisfied with the national targeting of specific crimes such as burglary and vehicle theft, there are other matters that concern them, such as disorder in public places, street drinking or drug taking in public, graffiti, truancy and abandoned vehicles on a neighbour's section. Left unchecked such things are signals that the community is not safer. Year on year reductions in targeted crime have not been mirrored with increases in public feelings of safety. While there are many factors that contribute to an individual's feeling of safety, it is known that addressing the signal crimes, such as street disorder, is important and has been at the heart of successful policing approaches overseas.

To be even more successful in the long-term, police need to engage with the harder to reach communities, such as new migrants, rural communities and a growing aged population. This would help build a cohesive society that will have broad benefits, and mitigate risks of marginalisation. A challenge for police is that the areas where some of the harder to reach communities are growing fastest are the same areas where police also face the greatest increases in service demand.

While new police resources are required to support increased police visibility at the community neighbourhood level, part of the challenge is not about resources, but about police leaders engaging with the community. Placing additional resource in new areas or in new communities will create some infrastructure pressures to accommodate staff in community roles. Police also seek to improve connections in the central business districts with an enhanced focus on liquor enforcement. We will look for broad ministerial support in this effort as the link for improved policing in communities ties strongly with other parts of government reassurance and building strong community cohesiveness.

Key Issue - A need to implement pro-active work on police integrity and ethics to enhance public confidence in police professionalism

New Zealand Police has an enviably high level of public trust and confidence that has remained reasonably constant over many years, but dipped recently. Maintaining those high levels of public confidence are vital underpinnings for our future. The recent 'culture' probe in Counties Manukau, comments from the Law Commission review relating to police prosecution standards, and the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct indicate that we need to reinforce some elements of police professionalism. Part of the answer will come from improving the number and quality of frontline supervisors. In addition, a programme to enhance police integrity and ethics for all staff is underway.

The future-focused ethics and integrity programme aims to support the current standards and address emerging issues that will include development of a police anti-corruption strategy, and ethics and integrity testing. The Commission of Inquiry will report in early 2006. Responses to its recommendations will require long-term and astute management, and likely highlight the need for a code of conduct for sworn officers. Provision for a code of conduct is contained in the Police Amendment Bill (No 2) introduced in 2001. The Bill is at the second reading stage and progressing the Bill is imperative.

Over the next 12 months we will be inviting the Minister to:

• assist police to lead development in community reassurance, especially with new migrant communities and hard to reach communities
• progress the Police Amendment Bill (No 2) through the House, and
• support the implementation of a police ethics and integrity programme that will contribute to Police regaining high trust and confidence from the public.