Tūrangi Police: Three weeks together a little too long for some

Tūrangi Police conducing a checkpoint just before Easter. Photo / Te Takinga New

Tena koutou katoa. Te Reipa is on leave this week so I am doing the weekly Tūrangi Police report.

We've had nine family harm callouts in the last week but none of them involved violence and no offences were disclosed. What they were was arguing stemming from the frustration some people are feeling after being together too long.

What's interesting is that some of the local families we have seen for family harm incidents in the past are not coming to our attention while we are under this alert level 4 lockdown. We've been visiting them to see how things are going and they've been getting on fine, so maybe it was something else, such as drinking or going out, that they've not doing right now.

We've still been going out and doing a lot of reassurance and education in our community, not just in Tūrangi but also to the southern lake shore settlements, and when people have rung the 105 number to report breaches we've gone and visited to see what's going on.

We didn't find many visitors to the area over Easter although I can report that some of the holiday homes around the area have been used for self-isolation over the last three weeks. For example, at Whareroa there were some people who had returned from overseas who were self-isolating at a holiday home and then left after their 14 days had been completed.

New World Tūrangi was also busy before Easter which was mostly people restocking before the shop shut for Good Friday. A shout out here to New World which has done an amazing job during this lockdown with their service and keeping people safe.

Over the Easter break we had a lot of people travelling through the area and when we stopped cars at checkpoints we discovered many of them were trying to get to Auckland to catch the repatriation flights to Germany. The rest had legitimate excuses, including one person who was fleeing a domestic violence situation in Auckland.

However there were two vehicles that we turned around in Tūrangi because they were somewhere they shouldn't be, including a carload of people which was sent back to Hawke's Bay.

Constable Jeremy Poynter of Tūrangi Police. Photo / File

Some of the other work we have been doing included a recent check of all the hunting spots off the Desert Rd. We didn't find any hunters' cars in the parking areas which was good to see. We don't want someone getting in trouble in the bush and calling people out of their bubbles to get some egg who has hurt themselves.

As always last week we had a few breaches of the lockdown last week by the same people who are breaching it continuously and are just hard to educate.

That said, most people have been really good about calling us about possible breaches and it would be also good if they could let us know about tinny houses that are operating and other illegal activities. In addition there were two burglaries reported and a non-suspicious house fire in Grace Rd.

Interestingly, Tūrangi Foodbank has reported fewer people needing food from them but I know that Civil Defence and iwi organisations have also been helping out in this space. If you do need to contact Tūrangi Foodbank. They now have an 0800 number which is 0800 926 040 available between 10am and 12pm Monday to Friday.

On the whole, our Tūrangi people have been really resilient and worked together really well to help each other through this lockdown. Thank you and have a safe week. Ngā mihi, Jeremy.