Bay cops reject help plea from colleagues

Bay police have rejected a plea to send senior staff to the beleaguered Counties-Manukau district as they work to clear their own backlog of cases.
A team of eight senior investigators, from Waikato and North Shore/Waitakere, has been pulled together urgently and will this week start to clear the long list of files at Counties-Manukau.
Western Bay police declined a request for detectives, saying they could not afford to lose staff with their own pile of cases yet to be worked on.
Pressure is mounting on Police Commissioner Rob Robinson to clarify whether he thinks the police have enough resources.
The Bay of Plenty Times revealed last week there were 24 unassigned cases in the Western Bay which included rapes and child abuse.
The tactical response manager, Detective Inspector Karl Wright-St Clair, today said 11 cases remained unassigned. Four related to historical sexual abuse cases, three were current investigations, two involved physical child abuse and two were dishonesty crimes.
Mr Wright-St Clair said he hoped that by the end of this month all the outstanding cases would be given to detectives.
"Western Bay police did have a request to send staff to Auckland but becuase of our current workload we have declined that," he said.
Once an officer is assigned to a case, an investigation plan is drawn up and the victim or victims are contacted, he said.
It was revealed in Parliament late last month there were 1134 "unallocated" police files in Counties-Manukau. Fourteen were sex cases, including eight rape complaints.
Under pressure in Parliament, Police Minister George Hawkins read a list of unassigned cases nationwide totalling 2043.
Bay of Plenty Police Association representative Mel Ridley said moving staff from one area to another was just a "band-aid fix" and the simple solution was to have more police on the beat.
Mr Ridley, a detective with 33 years in the force, said the lack of staff was the worst he had seen in his career.
Just last week Mount Maunganui detectives had to cover a shift for frontline staff. They dealt with shoplifters and juvenile offenders before a late shift took over.
"The solution is simple - we need more staff - it's as easy as that," Mr Ridley said.
He said drugs, organised crime and fraud were not getting the attention they deserved.
National's law and order spokesman, Tony Ryall, said the rest of the country was being asked to pay the price for Auckland being under-staffed.
"It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul - except no one wins."
The pressure continues to mount for the country's top policeman to speak publicly about the state of resources and the need for more frontline officers.
In the latest edition of the Police Association magazine Police News, president Greg O'Connor questioned why Commissioner Rob Robinson insisted on assuring politicians and the public that there are plenty of frontline police when that was not true.
Mr O'Connor said he would not usually criticise the commissioner.
However, there was a stark difference between reports from police officers that they were desperately short of frontline police and the minister's comments that there were adequate resources.