Insurers say criminals cost $20m a month

The Insurance Council has called for a rise in police numbers, saying criminals are costing insurers $20 million a month.

Wading into the increasingly testy election-year debate, council chief executive Chris Ryan said yesterday that criminals were being empowered by under-resourced and overstretched police.

The situation was now at crisis point and an extra 600 police over two years were needed.

New Zealand had the worst population-to-police ratio in the English-speaking world and would need an extra 2000 sworn officers to bring it up to Australian standards, Mr Ryan said.

Despite figures showing a drop in crime, the council believed there had been a significant increase in "the threat of serious violent crimes and class A drug crime, which includes methamphetamine and robbery".

While reported burglary, unlawful taking of vehicles and theft from vehicles had levelled, the amount criminals were stealing was rising.

Council members paid out just over $1.5 billion in insurance claims, of which $250 million was due to property crime, he said.

A spokesman for Police Minister George Hawkins said the council "should be pleased that dishonesty offences were down 9.7 per cent in 2004 and property damage down 5.4 per cent".

Burglary numbers had dropped from 96,000 in the mid-1990s to 57,669.

In Parliament National's law and order spokesman Tony Ryall said police documents revealed budget constraints had driven Counties-Manukau police numbers down.

They showed the district began the financial year with 683 staff and now had only 633, he said.

The documents indicate the district had budgeted for 663 sworn officers at the beginning of the financial year, but subsequently reduced that to 643 as it boosted staffing budgets in other areas.

Mr Ryall said numbers had been dropped below the present budget to compensate for the initially higher-than-budgeted numbers, despite the Counties-Manukau backlog of more than 1000 unallocated cases.

The Government said this week that it had put eight extra police in the district to tackle the backlog.

Mr Hawkins said yesterday that there had been 2072 police in Auckland last July and now there were 2088.

Asked by United Future MP Marc Alexander if he had put in a Budget bid for more frontline staff, Mr Hawkins said: "That member will have to wait until 19 May, when I will be smiling."