Paula Bennett: More police for the Bay

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Police Paula Bennett.

Last week Prime Minister Bill English and I announced a $503 million initiative called Safer Communities that will increase police staff by 1125 - a 10 per cent increase.

I'm unapologetic about targeting the worst offenders to get them off our streets, but I also believe we can achieve more by investing smartly in areas that will prevent crime from happening in the first place.

The community expects to see police on the beat, so we're going to ensure that 95 per cent of New Zealanders are within 25 kilometres of patrolling officers. This announcement is about the entire country - every single police district will have more police, 140 of the new officers will go directly to regional and rural areas.

The police commissioner has identified the Eastern District as a priority area and you can be assured that your fair share of police are on the way to Hawke's Bay. The commissioner will announce exactly how many in the coming months.

We want to tackle the worst kinds of crime, which is why we're adding more specialist investigators for child protection, sexual assault and family violence. We are unapologetic about targeting the worst offenders.

We'll also have more officers to target organised crime, gangs and drugs - in particular methamphetamine. We want this insidious drug out of our communities.

Police will work alongside other agencies in this battle. We will lock up the worst offenders. Corrections will then work to rehabilitate them.

The Ministry of Social Development will work alongside the police to prevent their children from following the same path - we want to break the cycle of drugs and family violence.

It's important that the entire country has easy access to police at all times. At the moment there are more than 300 local police station numbers throughout the country - some of these are not answered 24/7.

So from next year there will be an easy to remember number launched for all non-emergencies.

It will be run alongside the 111 emergency centre and people will be available to look up information about police files, report suspicious activity or report a historic crimes.

Advances in mobile technology mean we can use our officers more effectively. Since introducing more mobility devices and applications, the equivalent of 354 frontline officers have been freed up so they're spending less time behind a desk and more time on the street.

That's the equivalent 354 officers in addition to the 1125 we've just announced.
We're also introducing 12 mobile policing units which can go to areas in need, whether there's a large scale emergency or a community event.

This is a $503m investment, but this is your money that we're spending. To make sure we're getting results we've set a number of challenging performance targets.

We expect police will attend 98 per cent of burglaries within 48 hours. Over the next four years police will seize $400m of cash and assets from gangs and organised crime, up from $230m. Police will increase their response time for both answering and attending emergency calls, and we're going to reduce the number of deaths from family violence and reduce Maori offending.

Every New Zealander has a right to feel safe in their home and their community and I'm hopeful this announcement will achieve that for the people of Hawke's Bay.

- Paula Bennett is the deputy prime minister and minister of police.