Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News talks'd
Speaker 1: be yes, And.
Speaker 2: The government is celebrating a drop in the Auckland CBD
Speaker 2: crime rates and there's less emergency housing being utilized now.
Speaker 2: So new statistics show twenty two percent drop and serious
Speaker 2: assaults in the Auckland CBD over the past year, eighteen
Speaker 2: percent drop in serious assaults resulting in injury. It looks
Speaker 2: as though recent changes to combat violent crime have been impactful.
Speaker 2: But where to from here? And Police Minister Mark Mitchell
Speaker 2: is with me now, Good afternoon. By the way, I
Speaker 2: enjoyed that piece in the Herald about your nice good
Speaker 2: bit of timing there reminiscing about the old days. Do
Speaker 2: you do you think about those days much?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: The dogs? It's very nice of you. I haven't read that.
Speaker 3: I've had some look, of course I do. I mean
Speaker 3: I love my police and career and I love my
Speaker 3: time on the dog section in the Aos and yeah,
Speaker 3: so it was I've sort of been pushing that off
Speaker 3: for a bit two months, but I finally willed to
Speaker 3: be said, okay, I am.
Speaker 2: Actually the photo of you with your dogs are man.
Speaker 2: That was one big pooch whoa he's huge.
Speaker 3: He was. He was a big guy. Believe it. I
Speaker 3: could feel it when I had to pick him up
Speaker 3: and throw him over a fenceets for.
Speaker 2: Real good stuff. Anyway, it's amusing here people go and
Speaker 2: read it's a great, great profile piece on that mark.
Speaker 2: But right now onto the serious stuff. So serious assaults
Speaker 2: are down twenty two percent. Violent incidents like shootings and
Speaker 2: stabbings are well, they're still in the headlines.
Speaker 1: I guess the.
Speaker 2: Question is mark your reaction to the stats, but also
Speaker 2: are we feeling safer?
Speaker 3: Look, we've still got a long way to go. We
Speaker 3: acknowledged that. But the good news is, and we think
Speaker 3: that we should actually highlight the fact that we've got
Speaker 3: a much more joined up approach now in the way
Speaker 3: that we're dealing with this. We've obviously focused on the
Speaker 3: auction CVD because we've just seen so much andy soshal
Speaker 3: and violent behavior and drug dealing and all the other
Speaker 3: sort of stuff that has been deeply concerning to the
Speaker 3: residents and obviously the shopkeepers and retailers, and so we
Speaker 3: just seen we've seen some early results. It's too early
Speaker 3: for celebration, but we're definitely moving in the right direction
Speaker 3: and we know we've got more work to do.
Speaker 2: Actually talk about that collaboration because I can imagine it's
Speaker 2: it feels like the right thing to say, to talk
Speaker 2: about the cooperation between police and social services. What do
Speaker 2: you think the real the main cause of this reduction
Speaker 2: in crime? Is it just cops on the beat or
Speaker 2: is it the whole shebang?
Speaker 3: So it's a combination of things. The police could not
Speaker 3: get on top of this problem by themselves and it
Speaker 3: became very apparent to me as the incoming milit so
Speaker 3: that everyone was off working in their own silos and
Speaker 3: it wasn't joined up. So I have called a meeting.
Speaker 3: It's Auckland COUNCILORSVIVED involved kind of or a ministry of
Speaker 3: social development, residents and rape pays groups, Business Association's Heart
Speaker 3: of the City, all of our social service providers, you
Speaker 3: know our Mary Warden's CPNZ. Well we all come together
Speaker 3: now I call that meeting and chare it once a month.
Speaker 3: We're all working together with a joined up strategy and
Speaker 3: it's working.
Speaker 2: As with the you and that's there. You've got twenty
Speaker 2: one more officers in Auckland CBD on the beat. I
Speaker 2: think is the presence of police on the beat. What's
Speaker 2: the main point of that. Is it about us seeing
Speaker 2: them and feeling safer, Is it about quick response time
Speaker 2: or is it about the presence and reducing the impetus
Speaker 2: for crime.
Speaker 3: That's definitely part of it, high visibility and reassurance. Without
Speaker 3: a doubt, there is also a prevention element to it.
Speaker 3: They possible get to know their patch, they take on
Speaker 3: of shi it, they understand what the drivers of crime
Speaker 3: are in the area. They get to know personally who
Speaker 3: the people that are causing the problems, and it's been
Speaker 3: very effective and we've seeing that in some of the
Speaker 3: results now that are starting to flow through. You know,
Speaker 3: I want to acknowledge the big constables through out there
Speaker 3: doing that job. They've been been outstanding job. They've had
Speaker 3: targets set for them, our meeting those targets, and the
Speaker 3: feedback that I get from them, tim is that they're
Speaker 3: actually totally enjoying it because the nature of police which
Speaker 3: is that it can be very negative, whereas they're really
Speaker 3: enjoying the public interaction and the positive feedback that they're getting.
Speaker 3: So it's nice to see them back out there and
Speaker 3: without a doubt, I mean, we're not reinventing the wheel here,
Speaker 3: it's just back to basics police, and.
Speaker 2: What about rolling this approach out around the country and
Speaker 2: other places? Are you looking at sort of? I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously it's an operational decision up to a point, isn't it.
Speaker 3: No, we are doing that. We're out of doubt. So
Speaker 3: there's been additional beach staff put into both Wellington and
Speaker 3: Canterbury and where we can. Of course, we want to
Speaker 3: see a continued beat presence and our provincial towns and
Speaker 3: our rural towns. No, it's not contained to Auckland at all.
Speaker 3: But obviously there's been a big focus on just because
Speaker 3: of the rapid deterioration over the last few years and
Speaker 3: we had to reverse that.
Speaker 2: Of course, we have had some terrible headlines. It seems
Speaker 2: there's a shooting or a stabbing or something every week
Speaker 2: or maybe even more frequently. Where are we at with
Speaker 2: being able to get on top of that sort of
Speaker 2: stuff and is that mostly gang related or what?
Speaker 3: So it's been a very tough sort of ten days
Speaker 3: two weeks in terms of the homicides that we've seen.
Speaker 3: Most of those are contained. They're awful, but most of
Speaker 3: them are contained. And by what by that. What I
Speaker 3: mean is that the people know each other. It's not
Speaker 3: necessarily out in the public. It could be awful domestic violence,
Speaker 3: which of course we're able to do something around our
Speaker 3: family harm, the rape of family harm in this country.
Speaker 3: Or it might be gangs fighting with each other. But
Speaker 3: without a doubt, we've seen you know that in the
Speaker 3: last ten days, we've seen that real spike. The police
Speaker 3: are working very hard, but of course they don't always
Speaker 3: have the answer to these things. They are contained when
Speaker 3: it might be a family violence type situation. But certainly
Speaker 3: we're standing up our Social Investment Agency. We're starting to
Speaker 3: get a lot more aligned with other agencies to try
Speaker 3: and see the red flags and indicators and get in
Speaker 3: there much earlier to prevent these sorts of thing Senter.
Speaker 2: What about minor assaults? Where we are we at with that?
Speaker 2: Because you see you bus drivers are soldiers here, someone's
Speaker 2: punched in a park somewhere else Where are we at
Speaker 2: with the minor assaults? Or now, don't I say minor
Speaker 2: but they're not serious.
Speaker 3: Look, I can't give you the dath on minor assaults.
Speaker 3: I know that we've seen ram raids, aggravated robberies and
Speaker 3: knife crime come down for acervative robberies down about ten percent,
Speaker 3: knife crime down about ten percent, but still an unacceptable
Speaker 3: rate of general assaults. You're on our buses which were
Speaker 3: seeing and look, we just sort of we take this
Speaker 3: here at tolerance to it and and you know, these
Speaker 3: are the things that we're really focused on on. Fire
Speaker 3: free up police hours, get them focused back on their
Speaker 3: core role, and you know, and we just but we look,
Speaker 3: there's been a huge growth over the last six years.
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to diminish the job that we've got
Speaker 3: in front of us, but the good but the good
Speaker 3: thing is as we're starting to see some early positive results.
Speaker 2: Uh just don't know on my personal side of things,
Speaker 2: like so, I've had a big response from parents and
Speaker 2: my daughter's school group because they were subject on an
Speaker 2: assault where we put out this thing for all the kids,
Speaker 2: do you want to do a self defense course? Every
Speaker 2: parent and every kid said yes, which back when I
Speaker 2: was growing up, we never would have dreamed about it.
Speaker 2: So where are we at with with trying to get
Speaker 2: on top of that. I don't know whether it's just
Speaker 2: an impression, but it feels that society, regardless of the
Speaker 2: stabbings is just more violent. There's more violent assaults. Is
Speaker 2: more the casual nature of it. What's your take on.
Speaker 3: That, Well, I think there is a casual nature to
Speaker 3: it because not one, there's been no consequences. Number two,
Speaker 3: when you look at the social media and content that
Speaker 3: young people are sort of engaging with now, and the
Speaker 3: fact that we've just got to implement standards and so
Speaker 3: that you know, I'm sorry, like I said to you,
Speaker 3: a zero tolerance towards any type of assault, which is
Speaker 3: what we should be. That's the position we should be
Speaker 3: taken as a society, and slowly we'll start to roll
Speaker 3: this stuff back. You need very strong leaderships, leadership within
Speaker 3: the schools, You need parents to step up and support that.
Speaker 3: You need strong leadership through your central government agencies, from
Speaker 3: local government, from community based organizations to be for us
Speaker 3: ought to be aligned to say, you know what, we're
Speaker 3: going to adopt some standards of this country, and one
Speaker 3: of them is that assaulting people is no longer acceptable.
Speaker 2: Is that anything you need to specifically legislate for with
Speaker 2: the courts.
Speaker 3: Around consequences, we are having to do that. We're making
Speaker 3: changes to the sentence in act. We're saying that we're
Speaker 3: going to cap discounts to forty percent because we felt
Speaker 3: very strongly as the incoming government that the seriousness of
Speaker 3: the offending was not being reflected in the consequences and
Speaker 3: the sentences. So yes, we are having to make some
Speaker 3: changes to legislation now.
Speaker 2: And new powers for police. What's on the horizon.
Speaker 3: So there's some new powers for police that should be
Speaker 3: really in November. It's a suite of new powers around
Speaker 3: the policing gangs, anty social behavior, taking over public roads,
Speaker 3: intimidation of the public. Of course, we're banning their gang patches.
Speaker 3: We're going to have non consulting orders which will stop
Speaker 3: them from being able to get organized around the next
Speaker 3: and the furious activities. So yes, there are a suite
Speaker 3: of new laws coming out, new pairs for police.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well, it's good to celebrate some results on that
Speaker 2: serious crime stuff. So I appreciate your time, staff.
Speaker 3: Non Mark, thanks handing me on.
Speaker 2: Cheers, Thanks very much. Yeah, go get a copy of
Speaker 2: the new's thee on Herold. It's a good piece. It's
Speaker 2: an interesting piece, just talking about his time and the
Speaker 2: Umdefender Squad and the dog squad. But I'll tell you
Speaker 2: what you check out that photo of him next to
Speaker 2: his dogs. Are that dog was?
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