Without fear or favour

An elderly Kaitaia couple have found the police response to their fears wanting. Photo / Peter Jackson

The very Far North has long been well served by its police. Kaitaia, at least, has benefited from a series of committed, highly capable officers in charge, in the writer's experience, since the indefatigable Bruce Baker, a sergeant very much cast from the traditional mould, who maintained law and order with a force of four constables, one police car, no CIB and diminutive civilian receptionist/clerk Kathy Thirkettle.

He was followed by the last of the sergeant OCs, Colin Yates, who in turn was succeeded by the late lamented John Ponsford, who arrived in New Zealand from the London Met.

In more recent times the station has been led by senior sergeants Geoff Ryan and Russell Richards, whose move sideways earlier this year has left a vacancy that has yet to be filled.

It would be fair to say that, like all stations, Kaitaia has been home to one or two officers over the years who did not make quite the same contribution as others, but by and large the community has been blessed, although it has never been immune to the way in which policing has changed, and continues to change at a seemingly increasingly frenetic pace, and indeed the way in which offending has changed, and increased, despite every Minister of Police assuring us to the contrary when the annual statistics are released in July every year.

The response of the local police to a series of incidents, culminating in what has been reported as arson, in Kaitaia over recent weeks and months has, however, fallen short of what most people would expect. To a degree the police might have done what they could to put a stop to kids riding motorbikes in what is without doubt, judging by the writer's own observations, a dangerous and illegal manner, but the perception in some quarters is very different.

And, as in most fields of human endeavour, perception is at least as important as reality.

One of these bikes has been confiscated, and the kids activity seems to have tailed off over the last week or two, but the primary victims, an elderly couple who say they are known by the children and their family as responsible for kicking off their problems with the police and the district council since they set up camp in a small patch of bush on the Parkdale reserve, have been left not only unsatisfied but in fear of their physical safety.

Whether they have genuine grounds for fear might be debatable, but the fact is, they are frightened. And they have received no assurance whatsoever that the police will protect them, or will even listen to them.

A lot of what the police do on a daily basis could be described as public relations, and in this case they have failed miserably. If that is open to dispute, and if there is another side to the story, which there always is, then they have made no effort to explain that. Like many a government department, it has simply gone to ground. And that isn't good enough.

Nor, according to one of the complainants' version, was the reaction she received at the police station. A retired consulting psychiatrist who for many years worked with young Māori with mental health issues, she says she was asked whether she knew how to communicate with the children whose behaviour was frightening her. Not unreasonably, she took offence at that, and began to suspect that she was not being taken seriously. She formed the view that the officer was making assumptions about her based on her "plummy" English accent.

This might be policing without fear but would not seem to be without favour. Even if the officer believed that the woman's concerns for her safety were baseless, she deserved much better than that. And, given that she has made her concerns public, she deserved a public response. At the time of writing she had not received one.

It is worth noting that this couple are not alone in expressing annoyance, if not fear, at the way these children have been behaving. The police must be, or should be, aware that there is a real issue in this street, and even if they are addressing it to the best of their ability - the impounding of one of the bikes is encouraging - they need to make a much more effective effort at communicating that.

It is in the best interests of the police to do this. They tell us, repeatedly, that any information they receive has value, and might well be used to make the community a safer one for all. Dismissing complaints, even of what might be described as of a relatively minor nature (although this situation is far from minor to those most affected by it) as resulting from someone's inability to communicate is unlikely to be the best means of encouraging public co-operation.

'Safer communities together' should be much more than a slogan. And for many of the men and women in the NZ police it is, but an opportunity to reinforce that seems to have been lost here. The very Far North should have total faith in its police, and is rarely given cause not to. The response to this situation needs to be examined, quickly, and improved upon.

How bizarre

How timely it is that Pauly Fuemana's 'How Bizarre,' officially New Zealand's 34th greatest song, and the world's 71st greatest one-hit wonder (for the OMC, the Otara Millionaires' Club), should be making a comeback, last week racking up 2 billion views on TikTok.

The song was released in 1995, but seems much more pertinent now, in these truly bizarre times.

It would once have been inconceivable, for instance, that the Speaker of the House would blatantly defame a parliamentary employee, then claim that when he made his accusation he didn't understand the precise meaning of the word 'rape,' then call on the taxpayer to bail him out, having reportedly changed the rules to enable him to do that.

How bizarre that this man, whose primary functions include seeing that Parliament maintains civilised standards, and whose mission, in his own words, is to make the place a safe one for all who work there, should exhibit such extraordinarily bad judgement, then simply hunker down in the hope that it will go away.

How bizarre that the Prime Minister, leader of the party of which the Speaker is a member, should say none of this has anything to do with her.

How bizarre, too, that a company should believe that promising to drop $100,000 into a crowd in Auckland was a good idea, or that mixing the cash, if indeed there was any cash, with vouchers for its products was a good idea. How bizarre that an Auckland pub/club or whatever should claim that its staff had accepted some of the vouchers as genuine $5 notes, having been unable to tell the difference.

How bizarre that one individual would drive from Palmerston North to Auckland in the expectation of instant riches. How bizarre that a petition has been launched, demanding that the Safety Warehouse make amends by exchanging its vouchers for cash. And how bizarre that the Safety Warehouse should feel compelled to deny that it had any intent to deprive, mislead or embarrass any person of any demographic or race with its ill-conceived promotion.

ACT leader David Seymour reckons the current government is turning the people of New Zealand into peasants. It is becoming increasingly difficult to disagree with that.