Rotorua Lakes councillor Lani Kereopa. Photo / Andrew Warner
Rotorua Lakes councillor Lani Kereopa. Photo / Andrew Warner
A council-police community safety plan fails to address the root cause of crime - poverty, a councillor believes.
Rotorua Lakes councillor Lani Kereopa has spoken out over the plan which is being developed to cut crime and antisocial behaviour in the city - including violent offending, shoplifting, graffiti and theft from cars.
Kereopa told Local Democracy Reporting she supported the plan and partnership between Rotorua Lakes Council and police.
But in her view: “My issue is that it’s focused on being an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.”
Areas such as Fordlands and Kuirau were in the 10 per cent most deprived in the country, ranked as decile 10 on the 2018 New Zealand Index of Deprivation.
Kereopa said children resorted to stealing food and clothing to survive, and it continued into adulthood.
She believed victims of child abuse and violence sometimes “learn a disregard for the bodies of others”, and it could result in future offending.
The plan, in her view, should therefore have a 50/50 split of resources to nourish and protect children and to catch and punish youths who turned to crime.
“That should be the starting point and we should have a timeline by which we expect to move to 80 per cent resourcing going towards improving social equity and 20 per cent towards catching criminals.”
She likened the focus on catching criminals to when iwi and police met to address the meth epidemic she said ravaged the city’s communities a decade ago.
She said iwi did not think sending its people to jail was the answer and it needed resourcing and support to help whānau with addictions to provide sustainable solutions to both meth and crime issues.
The first-time councillor also believed equity in council services across its communities was important for making them safer, including for fair and effective public services such as transportation, cleaning and lighting, water supply and recreation services across all suburbs.
The plan needed to recognise that communities within Rotorua had different levels of advantage and required different approaches and resources to get equitable service outcomes, she said.
“That also includes equity in decision-making relating to things like consenting of liquor and gambling licences and commercial and industrial zoning.
“Obviously, all these things are connected to the health and wellbeing of communities and have been shown to directly correlate with the safety or otherwise of communities.”
She said the council did not outline in the plan how it would support local social services to grow and build on work in the communities with the most need.
Therefore she believed the plan should include strategies, resourcing and timelines to ensure appropriate support for things like addictions and mental health.
“Many of the crime and safety issues we are currently experiencing here in Rotorua have been caused by the actions of government departments as part of their emergency housing strategies.”
Collectively, she said the council, police and local social service providers should be calling for targeted funding for Rotorua to address the social needs of the homeless, “who have ended up here as a direct result of government departments channelling of people with social issues from around the country here”.
In response, acting mayor Sandra Kai Fong said community safety was of top priority for the new council.
Deputy mayor Sandra Kai Fong at the April 5 council meeting. Photo / Laura Smith
“We’re well aware of social issues that were exacerbated by the number of emergency housing motels in and around Fenton St and our CBD.
“This is why within two months of being elected we had negotiated and signed the Rotorua Housing Accord with a goal of significantly reducing emergency housing motels, and therefore reducing social issues.”
She said the council was limited in what it could do in the community safety space, which was why it was working with police to combine resources.
“We’ve had great success already from this partnership and we are working on longer-term solutions for community safety which require resourcing and a comprehensive plan between multiple government and community agencies.”
She said the council’s Child Equity Programme was well established and hundreds of children had access to what they needed to thrive because of it.
A final strategy document will be presented to councillors in the coming months.
Rotorua police area commander Inspector Herby Ngawhika said police were focused on keeping communities safe and continued to deploy staff to the times and places it knew it needed to have a presence in.
Rotorua area commander inspector Herby Ngawhika. Photo / Laura Smith
“We also know we need collaboration and community partnership to address the underlying causes of crime, and the plan will address that.”
He said it recognised not all issues were for police to manage alone.
“This is why we are partnering with Rotorua Lakes Council and will continue to work with other community partners on local solutions for what are complex social issues.”
Housing Minister Megan Woods and Police Minister Ginny Andersen were approached for comment.
Laura Smith is a Local Democracy Reporting journalist based at the Rotorua Daily Post. She previously reported general news for the Otago Daily Times and Southland Express and has been a journalist for four years.
- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ on Air
