Police have been called to thousands of domestic violence incidents in the region. Photo / File
68,150.
That's the number of times police have been called to family violence incidents in the Bay of Plenty in almost five years.
One call every 35 minutes.
Official Information Act figures from police revealed the number of domestic violence callouts between January 2017 and August last year.
In Tauranga, which included Tauranga City, Tauranga South, Mount Maunganui, Te Puke and Pāpāmoa, the callouts grew year on year.
There were 22,450 in total, with the worst year being 2020 when the police were called 5511 times - or once every 1.5 hours.
In Rotorua, the numbers climbed over this time.
While 2020, with 4446 callouts was the highest, the eight months to August 2021 had 3187 callouts — more than in all of 2017.
Bay of Plenty District police youth, community and family harm manager Inspector Phil Gillbanks said domestic violence was typically under reported.
A rise in reports could reflect a number of things, including an increased willingness by victims, whānau and witnesses.
He said police had seen more incidents where children and youth lashed out against parents or caregivers.
This was often because of the young people suffering from substance trauma relating to parents' long-standing use of meth, he said.
There was also an increase in controlling and coercive behaviour, which was often a result of jealousy manifested through the many online platforms.
He said population growth and two years with periods of Covid restrictions put "considerable" strain on some families.
Rotorua's Mihi James - a family lawyer and director with Mihi James Legal and chairwoman of the Waiariki Women's Refuge board, said the violence was becoming "more blatant".
On top of that, the many support services available were inundated and there were waitlists of months for victims and perpetrators to get help.
"Historically, people hid that behind closed doors but offenders now are becoming a lot more bold and blatant. These guys don't care, they're doing it anywhere, anytime.
"They're beating their partners up in the street in broad daylight. It's becoming really out of control."
James said the biggest contributor was drugs, which changed the level of violence.
"They're more heinous, they're more sick, they're more twisted. They're entirely irrational, there's no reasoning with them. They're completely out of control with no remorse and no self-control."
She said abusers high on meth had "no issue" beating up victims in front of people.
James said one woman was beaten by her partner in the street until she was unconscious, and the offender got someone who lived in the area to pick her up out of the gutter.
"The neighbour came out, took her into their house, wiped her down, but never called the police."
She said she did not want to see a culture forming where people ignored domestic violence, as this would only lead to it becoming more "blatant".
Most women she saw did not call the police, and relied on others calling help, she said.
A common thing she heard was that neighbours got used to hearing the fighting and beatings and stopped calling the police.
In her view, "significant delays" in police showing up deterred people from calling and put victims off taking further action as things had calmed down by the time enforcement arrived.
The many support services available were inundated and capacity was falling short, which has worsened in the past couple of years, she said.
"Even the offenders, at one stage they're genuinely wanting help, they've hit an all-time low and keen to do the services and programmes," she said.
She said it's months before people can get into a programme - long enough to lose interest.
"You've got to catch them when they're motivated to change."
She had five Without-Notice Protection Order applications when she arrived into the office after the Christmas and New Year break, which she' never had.
"Five, for my first day back is ridiculous. You'd be lucky to get that in a month."
She said many factors contributed to the rise in violence in the community: income, job loss, living costs, meth and the housing crisis.
Tauranga Living Without Violence practice leader Glynette Gainfort did not believe there was more family violence, there was just more reporting of it.
"The numbers are awful. There's always been this family violence, it was just very much a culture of closed doors."
She said there also was not previously the support there is now and campaigns, services and publicity have been useful.
"More people are saying 'I don't have to live like this'; neighbours are saying 'this isn't alright'."
She said child abuse was heavily linked to family violence in the home and social media helped raise awareness of the number of children being "battered and killed".
"We have more an attitude of this is not okay. We're certainly meeting a lot of woman saying this is not okay."
Gainfort said people in Tauranga were good at reporting incidents.
She said there "is not nearly enough" support as specialist agencies were "under the pump".
"It's scary."
She said more men than she had seen in her six years at the service were contacting them to get help for their behaviour.
She said perpetrators would tell them about their "horrific" childhoods.
Gainfort said from her perspective, there were delays in police response to domestic violence, which came down to the quantity of issues police were dealing with on top of the strains caused by the pandemic.
"Our family violence police team here are often deployed to do Covid and border stuff, that means the family violence stuff can't be dealt with.
"We absolutely need more services, we need more police, we just need more of everything to actually deal with this.
"All the kōrero is out there, but there's not enough resourcing for the follow-through."
She said things like meth and alcohol may fuel the violence, but were not the root cause, and believed that was linked to things such as gendered roles and colonisation.
"There's definitely more tension, stress, unemployment - the whole vaccination debate - but again, lots of people struggle with that and don't abuse their families.
She said ongoing initiatives and more resourcing was what would help families and open services up to do more prevention work.
"At the moment, specialist agencies and police are just picking up the pieces."
Shakti regional coordinator Lisda Anggraeni said the domestic violence had been increasing year on year, but abusers and victims were blaming mental health.
She said 2020 had a sharp rise in harm with perpetrators at home during the lockdown, however, it continued to increase last year.
She said cases were becoming increasingly complex and abusers were getting "more clever" in attempts to avoid police and make it more difficult to be taken to court.
She said mental health was being used as an excuse by abusers and there were instances where abusers said their partner had mental health issues and lashed out at him, and he retaliated.
Shakti supports ethnic women and children affected by domestic violence.
Gillbanks said the five joint-agency Family Harm Tables across the region worked "tirelessly" and could intervene and make sure people were safe.
He said not all family harm situations involve violence or injuries, and police attendance and response varied.
Sometimes officers needed to remove someone being physically aggressive or abusive, other times they spend a considerable amount of time talking to people, making sure they had appropriate referrals to other agencies, he said.
He said the police focus was making sure everyone involved was safe and well, and police worked with community partners to do this.
Bay of Plenty District Prevention manager Inspector Steve Bullock said there was an increase in calls and some of the Family Harm team staff had been tasked to work on the national police Covid-19 response.
He said calls were prioritised in terms of risk and those at greater risk were attended as soon as possible.
Lower risk calls were attended later, sometimes the next day, he said.
He said the region invested in family harm resourcing over the past few years by creating prevention teams, part of a coordinated multi-agency approach.
Western Bay of Plenty District could have fewer councillors to vote for next election.