Central Tauranga library He Puna Manawa. Photo / Talia Parker
Antisocial behaviour at Tauranga Library is being attributed to homeless people using it for internet access.
There were 24 incidents of antisocial behaviour at the four Tauranga libraries between August 1, 2022, and February 28, 2023.
Fifteen of the incidents occurred at the central Tauranga library He Puna Manawa, four happened at Pāpāmoa, three at Greerton and two at Mount Maunganui library.
The information was released to Local Democracy Reporting under official information legislation.
Tauranga City Council health safety and wellbeing team leader Darren West said libraries tended to be a “housing point” where people came for a place of warmth and shelter.
”It’s the homelessness. A lot of people go there to use the internet services to find new employment because they don’t have access, and that’s where a lot of those issues come,” he said.
West made the comments at the council’s strategy, finance and risk committee meeting last month.
”It’s unfortunate, but we’ll work with them and we have to be community focused in regards to that.
”We don’t want to turn these people away. It’s just a balance.”
During the meeting, commission chair Anne Tolley said it was “really disappointing” to hear about the antisocial behaviour.
”I was aware that some of our roading contractors are getting a pretty tough time from frustrated people, but you don’t sort of associate libraries with people who are abusive and threatening to staff.”
TCC libraries manager Joanna Thomas told Local Democracy Reporting the incidents were mainly verbal disputes and there had been no injuries or physical assaults from the incidents.
”[It’s] people being aggressive or rude to each other or to staff,” she said.
”Some of them are very minor, some of them are more serious.”
Thomas gave an example of one incident where someone was talking loudly on the phone and swearing. They were asked to be quiet then the person on the phone swore at the other person.
She said the incidents were mainly between patrons but some were directed at library staff.
”That’s often as a result of maybe an intervention of staff to modify the person’s behaviour and then the aggression goes to the staff.”
Thomas said she felt “quite comfortable” if she had to deal with one of these incidents.
“There is a lot of stress in the community. There’s a lot of stress in any kind of retail environment, so it’s not nice to deal with.”
Asked what the council was doing to prevent incidents and protect staff, Thomas said library staff have on-going refreshers for resilience training, de-escalation and personal safety training.
All four libraries had CCTV, duress alarms, building lockdown capability, monitoring and attendance by private security, she said.
Thomas has been the libraries manager since 2018 and said the number of antisocial incidents over that time had remained stable.
He Puna Manawa had 20,000 visitors a month so the number of antisocial incidents was a “very small percentage”, she said.
”The teams in the libraries really appreciate when people are kind and grateful for services. A kind word goes a long way.”
Details revealed about five men caught up in an underage prostitution ring.