This could easily take up to one-and-a-half hours or more before the two officers return to continue their patrol in Napier.
Should another arrest be made within a short period of time then again two officers to Hastings, again as above, which then leaves the Napier police station four officers down.
For security reasons I will not mention how many police officers at night time should the former occur but it is certainly not many.
I consider the cells at Napier being knocked down is a serious blight and miscalculation by the department and in fact in my view is a breach of health and safety rules.
Sooner or later some police officers are going to be badly hurt should the present situation remain.
I would also like to comment on a couple of matters which to me display gross incompetence by the police and which I have been involved in.
Several months back I wished to speak to the senior sergeant at the Hastings police station and accordingly rang their number.
After waiting some time for a reply the caller answered "Christchurch Police here"..
Only some 800km out!
Upon asking why I wasn't talking to a member of the Hastings police the caller to my amazement stated "they have probably all gone out, left the station and switched the phones over".
When I worked relieving at stations such as Waipawa, Waipukurau and Dannevirke that was obviously the practice when one went out on a job and only one person was working.
However, today at a station serving over 60 thousand people it is almost unbelievable that this practice goes on.
On Thursday last week I lost a man bag in Hastings - with it containing lots of cards in my name - e.g. driver's licence, eftpos card, library card and the like. I thought if it had been handed into the police station I would have been contacted.
I spent hours retracing my steps that day - shops, car parks, ripped my house apart searching for the man bag, and my friend's car I had travelled in - to no avail.
On Monday morning, five days following the loss, I rang the Eastern Police phone number and asked to be put through to the Hastings police property officer.
When he answered the phone he identified himself as "Napier police here" then finally Hastings police, he can't have known what police station he was at!
I explained my loss to him and he stated "yes he had seen such a bag on the property office counter"'.
I asked him why no one had bothered to contact me - the police would have my driver's licence in their system with my phone number and address plus inquiries at my bank, library etc would have gleaned such details, and a short telephone call to me would have solved the situation immediately and I would have been able to uplift my man bag and contents.
To my horror the police had not recorded the details of the finder of my bag and I am now unable to contact that person to thank them for handing the bag in.
They should have been issued with a "found property form' and by not doing that the police would have left themselves wide open to suspicion should anything have been missing from the bag.
I would like to thank the person who found my bag and contents who handed it into the police should they read this.
Finally I am appalled that both Napier and Hastings police stations are shut from 7pm until 8am leaving about 140,000 people unable to call at either police station during those hours if they are in trouble and require immediate police attention.
Decisions such as outlined above are made by the police hierarchy in Wellington, while the real true officers are out there 24/7 in all conditions losing the battle to stem the crime wave - e.g. burglary and serving the public with ever diminishing numbers and resources.
It is well overdue for the police to look at themselves and the manner in which they are serving the public and I urge them to take note of my comments and urgently rebuild cells at the Napier police station.
- Stu McLachlan is a former Police Senior Constable with more than 32 years' service, most of it in the Hawke's Bay region. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
Havelock North
