Beach suburbs' burglary rates plummeting

Dishonesty crime has dropped significantly in both Mount Maunganui and Papamoa, with theft from cars and stolen cars dropping more than 30 per cent in both areas.
A new community approach to policing in the Bay - introduced in November last year - has contributed to decreasing crime rates at both beachside suburbs, with overall crime decreasing by 12 per cent in Mount Maunganui and Papamoa experiencing the Bay's biggest drop of 22.3 per cent.
Details of Mount Maunganui and Papamoa's crime figures follow the release of the latest Western Bay crime statistics which showed offending had dropped 8.7 per cent.
Overall, burglary offences dropped 25.1 per cent, with burglary from houses falling 17.6 per cent, theft from cars tumbling 32.7 per cent and reports of stolen cars falling 37.6 per cent.
However, violent attacks (excluding family incidents) rose 5.8 per cent and disorder offences increased 8.3 per cent.
Mount Maunganui Senior Sergeant Tania Kura praised the re-organisation, which gives officers in charge of the six Western Bay stations greater responsibility to manage resources.
"Patch policing is a good thing for us," she said. "I have accountability for the Mount Maunganui area. I deploy the staff to the risks as I see them - based on info from the intel section."
She said the community policing teams - consisting of five staff at each station - had helped improve incident response times, contributing to significant drops in dishonesty crime at the Mount and Papamoa.
Ms Kura said faster response to crimes like house burglaries had the potential to prevent more serious crime occurring while making the community feel safer.
She said increases in road policing staff had led to more cars being stopped, which in turn led to more stolen cars being recovered.
Ms Kura said drops in crime stations were a reflection of how hard her staff actually worked.
"I'd like our community to appreciate that they work really hard for them," she said.
"We have a hard job and we have a lot of people criticising us but when it comes down to things like this it's time for us to celebrate that we can get some things right."
Ms Kura also expected to see an increase in domestic violence at Mount Maunganui which was consistently lower than other areas, possibly due to an ageing demographic and more transient population. "I'd like to say that they have the confidence to report more, I imagine that it will go up."
Ms Kura said she would be pleased to see higher numbers of arrests for disorder at the Mount and Papamoa if this meant offenders were being caught before they had the chance to get involved in more serious crime.