Wairarapa police hope a Pacific Advisory Board will open discussions with Pacific Islanders in the community and create a safer Wairarapa.
Police detective Mana Faraimo has been tasked with setting up the board, which will consist of about seven people, likely to include police area commander Brent Register as the chair and Mr Faraimo as the liaison officer.
The board will meet quarterly with members of the Wairarapa Pacific community and other minority ethnic groups, such as Asians, Melanesians, Filipinos and Indians to discuss police and non-police issues they face in the community.
"The liaison is to link into the Pacific community with the police identifying any issues that are of interest for police services. Quite often we find that Pacific communities tend to keep to themselves, if there's ever a problem they tend to try and resolve it themselves.
"Maybe this will be a forum to help them do that."
