Len Brown: Beating crime in the Super City

The new Auckland Super City can be a super crime fighter. The first person to meet me in my new office on the day I became mayor of Manukau was not my deputy, or the council chief executive.

It was a television reporter wanting to question me about a drive by shooting and asking what I was going to do about crime in South Auckland.

He wasn't talking to any of the local MPs, or even the local police chief, but he wanted to know what the new mayor and council would do to sort this problem out.

The new Auckland Council will have a lot of work to do to help create a safer environment - police statistics show that Auckland City has more reported crime per 100,000 residents than any other police district in the country, and Counties/Manukau the fourth highest rate.

With P labs emerging in Remuera, no area is immune. The solutions are complex because crime is the product of many things - social dislocation, poverty and inequality, unemployment, failure at schools, abuse of alcohol and drugs, and, sometimes, just bad people.

No single answer - whether it is more police, tougher sentences, more social programmes, or a wealthier, healthier more equitable society - will work on its own.

From my experience, it is crucial that councils make safer communities a priority. As mayor of Manukau, I talk to Counties-Manukau police chief Mike Bush each week and back a tough approach on the scourge of drugs - especially P - within our community.

The new mayor will need to build similar close working relationships with the region's three district commanders. Since our Mayoral Taskforce on Drugs last year, we have supported the police's tough approach on drug houses, advocated for restricted sales of precursor drugs and continued to back community initiatives to beat this problem.

Concerted effort from councils across the region have seen a number of small programmes begin to have a real impact, particularly targeting minor offences before the perpetrators graduate to more serious offending. Graffiti, for example, is a low-level crime, but it is a real menace to property owners who are the targets, and quite a cost burden.

In Manukau we have just seen a 9 per cent fall in crime during the last three months of 2009. How have we managed that? A mix of programmes and more police. The council has contracted a private investigation firm to track down repeat graffiti offenders and provide police with information they can act on.

We advocated to Parliament and got an anti-graffiti law passed. It includes a programme involving visits to local primary and intermediate schools to discuss tagging. We also have a volunteer programme "Adopt a Spot" where volunteers eradicate graffiti utilising provided equipment.

We have 160 registered volunteers who receive regular information and networking meetings and volunteer awards.

We got involved in the launch of the new Crimestoppers information hotline. We supported the Government's initiative to reclassify pseudoephedrine as a prescription-only drug. We've pushed for better regulation of liquor outlets. We also assist the police by closed-circuit TV provision in four town centres, and through community patrols, two programmes that I intend to expand in the new Super City.

Community safety is an issue the new Auckland Council - and the local boards - must make its own.

What the new Auckland Council must do - and what would be a key priority if I am elected mayor - is pick up on these programmes - and the sister programmes which our other councils will be undertaking in the west, north, centre and south of the city - and form an immediate partnership with the community, police and the Government. The new council must take an active role, co-ordinating local crime prevention programmes with the police, youth workers and communities.

It won't stop crime being a hot news story when it happens. But it might make it a less frequent one.

Len Brown is Mayor of Manukau City.