Wairarapa's police boss explains spike in regional crime

Wairarapa's police boss says increased reporting, multiple charging and a zero tolerance policy help to explain the spike in violent offending and overall crime in the region.
Wairarapa area commander Inspector John Johnston was commenting on annual statistics published on Tuesday for the Wellington Police District for 2008, showing Wairarapa topped the district's five areas for per capita violent offending, total crime and property damage.
"Those statistics for violence include family violence and with better reporting and better action coming through the family court we will improve," Mr Johnston said. "We labour the point of zero tolerance and it sounds like a broken record but I believe the violent offending is going up because we have consistency across the force for the zero tolerance policy and we are multicharging."
Mr Johnston said Wairarapa police had the same benchmark for arrestable behaviour across the board and the increase in violent crime figures was proof that this approach worked.
Reported offending had reached a plateau over the past decade levelling out from nearly 5000 offences in 1999 then dipping below 4000 in 2007 to 2008's 4427, which was in the scope of stability and reflective of average offending in the past 10 years.
For the third straight year Wairarapa had the highest resolution rate for total crime with 48.9 per cent.
Recorded sexual offending was well down on 2007 dropping from 60 to 27 offences in 2008, however, the number of cases solved in this category was low under 41 per cent for the past three years when compared with other areas in the Wellington Police District especially Kapiti-Mana, which recorded an average 80.5 per cent resolution rate in this category over the same period.
Mr Johnston said he could offer no concrete explanation for the disparity in resolution between Wairarapa and Kapiti-Mana without doing a detailed historical analysis but said sexual crimes can be historic and take more time to pass through the justice system.
"The majority of sexual crimes end up in High Court and are serious matters and might not get dealt with and finalised for 12 months. "We may not be clearing stats straight away and Kapiti might be but I don't know what happens over there," he said.
Kapiti-Mana area commander Superintendent Hamish McCardle said the main reason the bulk of the districts 103 sex offences were resolved was because victims were largely known to offenders and were therefore more easily identifiable to police.
"The great majority of sexual offending in Kapiti-Mana is either inter-familial or the victim knows the offender," Mr McCardle said.
He said a city like Porirua had relatively few nightclubs compared with Wellington City, where incidences of rape and sexual assaults in bars and surrounding areas by strangers were much higher.
Sexual offending was up 30.4 per cent in Kapiti-Mana for 2008, in stark contrast to Wairarapa, which recorded a 55 per cent decline.
The other big discrepancy in the Wairarapa stats was the huge jump in property damage, which catapulted from 563 offences in 2007 to 899 in 2008.
Masterton police Detective Sergeant Rick Joblin compiled Wairarapa's statistics and attributed the property damage leap to a miniature crime wave from outside the region.
He said two frequently-visiting young people from Upper Hutt and Levin were mainly responsible for a spate of tagging around the region (including the infamous 'Clu' tag seen around Masterton streets) and had helped introduce a graffiti culture to the region by recruiting local taggers.