Acting Taupō area commander Senior Sergeant Herby Ngawhika addresses residents' concerns at the community meeting in Tūrangi. Photo / Laurilee McMichael
Acting Taupō area commander Senior Sergeant Herby Ngawhika addresses residents' concerns at the community meeting in Tūrangi. Photo / Laurilee McMichael
Tūrangi-Tongariro area residents say difficulties getting hold of police, slow responses to some 111 calls and groups of out of control teens in lakeshore settlements over the holiday season all point to the area needing more police.
The Tūrangi-Tongariro area, which covers the town of Tūrangi and its surrounding lakeshore settlements, is covered from Tūrangi Police Station, which has 10 staff.
This is a reduction from several years ago when, in addition to front line staff, there were also traffic police, a detective, a senior sergeant and two non-sworn staff members. However it is higher than the number of local police staff 18 months ago, which was eight.
Now it comprises a sergeant, five front-line staff, two Youth Aid constables, a community constable and a staff member responsible for managing family harm.
However until recently, the station was two staff short and the positions were only filled in December and mid- January.
Acting Taupō area commander Senior Sergeant Herby Ngawhika and Taupō area crime prevention manager Senior Sergeant Jason Henderson, as well as Sergeant Te Reipa Morunga of Tūrangi Police, were at a meeting with about 50 people at Tūrangi's Bridge Lodge on Tuesday evening to hear concerns and suggestions.
Some residents said they had had trouble getting police to respond to 111 calls over the past weeks.
One example was a woman who felt unsafe at home alone because of a group of suspicious people on her property and another was a person who twice found a prowler attempting to film or photograph in her bedroom by holding his phone in through an open window.
Resident Mike Fransham said Tūrangi was not a bad place or a lawless community.
"That's not the case at all, but bottom line is: if there's a threat, particularly to a person, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a response if you think that it's important enough to call 111."
New centralised contact centres mean that non-urgent calls to the local police station now go through to Bay of Plenty police headquarters and the Tūrangi Police Station's doors are often locked because staff are out on jobs or there is nobody to attend to the front counter.
A town centre retailer said rules were not being enforced, with cyclists and even motorcycles in the town centre, dogs off leads, litter, swearing and cursing, and groups of people making others feel intimidated.
Omori-Kuratau residents were also frustrated by some of the behaviours in their lakeshore settlement over New Year's, describing groups of drunk teenagers roaming the streets, smashing bottles, vandalising public facilities and throwing bottles into the Kuratau river and lake where families swam.
Resident Bronwyn Hunt said that while she wanted to acknowledge the work of Sergeant Morunga and his team, who "get spread pretty thinly", there had been issues at the settlement this year with unruly teenagers.
"I know that the police were there, they came out and they dealt with it but I'm not sure what we do about it ... the issue is actually a parent responsibility and we get parents who holiday at Omori Kuratau and they are not taking responsibility for the behaviour of their children."
She suggested a small team of police could base themselves at the Omori Kuratau Community Hall for 24 or 48 hours over the busy New Year period. Other suggestions were a security guard, with the agreement of police, and that liquor ban signage be increased and made more obvious.
Sandra Greenslade of the Tūrangi-Tongariro Residents & Ratepayers Association said part of the problem was the Tūrangi community was seeing more domestic visitors post-Covid and a rising population which meant police were spread more thinly.
Mr Ngawhika thanked the residents for airing their concerns and also making suggestions on what could be done, saying there was a part for everyone to play.
"One of the things that we as an organisation have is trying to deliver a service that everyone wants and expects.
"Obviously that's falling down a little bit in Tūrangi and Kuratau at the moment and that's a sign for us that we need to revisit it. We have to manage our resources with what we have in a better way.
"The influx of people changes the dynamic of the communities and brings a whole raft of issues that we need to look at. Kids smashing bottles and throwing things into the lake, we don't want those things. If it means having to deploy more resources into those areas that's something that we can look at.
"The concerns are not unique to Tūrangi but it's important to you as a community."
Some areas already operate Neighbourhood Support groups or Viber networks where they keep each other informed and the local community Facebook pages also have large followings.
Mr Morunga said Safe Tūrangi was working on strengthening the Tūrangi community patrol and more volunteers, or people to monitor the CCTV cameras, were also welcome. He hoped a new community safety hub in the town centre would be up and running soon and said locals could expect to see local police, including himself, working from there.
