Speed at cost of burglary?

Police are having to ignore petty crime in the Prime Minister's own electorate but still manage to have one in five officers on traffic duty.

The new statistics on road policing, obtained by the Herald on Sunday, come as evidence has emerged of the police's inability to tackle petty crime.

A letter from a Balmoral police sergeant told a Mt Albert liquor shop owner that he was unlikely to get any help with shoplifting complaints because officers were working on "major inquiries".

It comes as new traffic figures show that the highest number of tickets given out in New Zealand were in Central District - the district behind the "quota" memo which saw police in a storm over ticket quotas last week.

Central officers handed out about 18,000 tickets up to May this year - almost double what most police districts handed out. Other figures from the Office of the Commissioner show that in Auckland's three police districts, 20 per cent of frontline cops were assigned to road policing as their first priority. Nationwide, the figure is 18 per cent. The figures, released to the Herald on Sunday, only account for the primary duties of sworn officers. Of the 2169 sworn police officers in Auckland City, Counties-Manukau, and North Shore/Waitakere, 589 are assigned to general duties, 587 to investigations, 290 to road policing, 646 to operations support and 58 to management.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said Labour had taken steps to bolster community policing because of the importance of nipping petty crime in the bud.

"I'm all in favour of trying to get an emphasis on what looks like the lower end of crime but is actually a stepping stone to serious crime if it's not apprehended and dealt with effectively."

Of the 1000 extra cops announced as part of Labour's election deal with NZ First, 250 are supposed to go into frontline community policing. The extra officers are to be introduced over three years, with 406 funded in the first batch. Police Minister Annette King and Commissioner Howard Broad both say that meeting the targets will be "a challenge".

Helen Clark also defended the police focus on traffic enforcement, saying the strategy had reduced road deaths and cut the average speed. "The public will rightly be incensed if they think it's being done for revenue collection, but the revenue must be down, because the tickets are down, because they've got the speed down."

Police Commissioner Howard Broad defended the police attitude to petty crime yesterday, although he acknowledged that police were under pressure in Auckland.

A spokesman for Mr Broad said police bosses had to deal with increasing levels of violent crime. On "petty crime" the spokesman said police treated burglary as important because of its impact on individuals.

He rejected a link between a strong commitment to road policing and being unable to deal with all petty crime. Also, he said, the approach was driving the road toll down.

National Party law and order spokesman Simon Power said violent crime took top priority.

But "people get annoyed when they see resources being diverted to heavy traffic flow areas rather than to burglaries or the like".

"The public have an expectation that when they report a crime they're going to get some action."

It's a problem the government says it's working to fix.