The 111 Files: Prevention can stop a lot of heartache

I am not on Facebook, but what do you know - I now have a blog. Purists might describe it as a pseudo blog as it comes to you via the medium of a newspaper. But regardless of whether you want to describe it as a blog, or column, or something else, as part of the revamp of the Rotorua Daily Post, I have been asked to make a contribution.

Which raises a question. Given the amount of coverage police activity already gets in the media, why have me writing more?

The short answer is that although an awful lot of the emergency work we do features in the news, some of the other important aspects of policing, such as prevention, don't get much air time. There are several reasons for that, but the main one is that 'prevention' is not very exciting.

Many of the exciting things police officers end up doing arise from emergencies. But unless you're a downhill mountain biker or involved in some other extreme sport, emergencies are only exciting when they are happening to someone else.

Most people don't want to be at the centre of an emergency. (I suspect every mother reading this is nodding her head in agreement.) I'm not a mother, but I am married to one and I know the distress that arises when one sibling comes into the house to report on the well-being of another and the opening comment is "Mum, you know how Ethan had two arms..."

Which brings us back to prevention. Prevention is not exciting but is useful. And important. There is an old saying, 'an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure'. You don't have to be a police officer for long before you develop a rich understanding of the wisdom wrapped up in that little phrase.

A great many of the awful things we end up dealing with - from family violence to car theft - could be easily prevented if someone had only taken a few simple precautions.

So my little takeaway thought for you today is to encourage you to start thinking about prevention. You can do that by asking yourself simple questions.

Questions like, 'what could I do to make sure my car doesn't get broken into?' Or 'how can I make myself safe so he can't hit me any more?' If you're struggling to answer either of those questions, that's where we can help. Give us a call. Prevention is our business.

Inspector Bruce Horne is the Rotorua police area commander.