Chief to probe MP's traffic claims

Police Commissioner Rob Robinson has promised to investigate claims that police on traffic duty did not respond to a call to stop an offender who took a 2-year-old from its mother.

New Zealand First MP Ron Mark yesterday released an email about the failure of three traffic units to reply to repeated calls to respond.

The email, with the writer's details blanked out, said there was no reason for the units to be logged out of service and not listening to their radios.

"My reason for wanting them was to stop an offender who had taken a 2-year-old child away from its mother," the email read.

Mr Mark also released a letter from a former police dispatcher who said police were "letting the public down". The letter cited an incident where an elderly woman was being harassed by neighbourhood children while the sole constable on duty in Rangiora attended other jobs.

"At the same time I have logged on seven highway patrols working from the Rangiora base and our instruction is that they are not to attend to any events, including traffic accidents."

Police notes say the primary task of the highway patrol is accident prevention patrol duty and they are not to be diverted to other tasks.

If there is a serious or fatal crash, traffic control should be available promptly. If a highway patrol is working in the area, it should help with traffic control until a road-controlling authority contractor arrives.

Another email released by Mr Mark said traffic units should not be used unless there was an emergency as they had their "primary focus" to attend to.

"From the figures I have seen they have actually been doing too much crime work, to the detriment of their core business," the email said.

Calling units away and reassigning them to a higher-priority job had been done "since the first wireless arrived".

One email said road policing was under contract to the Government to supply a certain amount of road policing hours and could lose resources if it did not deliver.

Road policing staff were only to be used for crime work in emergency situations and when there was no alternative, the email said.

Mr Mark told TVNZ's Close Up programme the Government's priority there was a "carte blanche instruction" to police officers to issue 30 per cent more infringement notices in the next financial year regardless of whether people were behaving better on the roads.

"It's just a myopic focus on revenue-gathering to put money into the coffers," Mr Mark said.

But Mr Robinson said the results achieved by police in the past five years made a lie of that claim.

Directions to staff were that priority-one events - involving life or limb or property at immediate risk - had to be dealt with first.

The commissioner said staff had spoken to Mr Mark, asking to review the correspondence he had. "If there are some issues that need to be addressed, they will be addressed.

"If we have to reinforce to staff in the field that the public expectation and their commissioner's expectation is priority-one events will take precedence, then I will do that," Mr Robinson told Close Up.

Police attended hundreds of thousands of incidents every year and it was "unfortunate" that Mr Mark had raised one incident out of all the "wonderful work that my staff do day in and day out".

Mr Mark claimed at a select committee hearing late last year that there was anecdotal evidence of incidents where police officers were not attending emergencies because they were on traffic duty.

- NZPA