Palino calls for retired police task force

Mayoral candidate John Palino believes a task force of retired police officers with authority to round up criminals would make Auckland’s streets safer.

The idea was put forward during a mayoral debate at Massey University on September 22 in response to a question from host Susan Wood about how to prevent violent attacks on migrants

‘‘How I got the idea was actually from retired police officers who came up with the idea of putting together a task force of detectives that actually go and take the cases from police and relieve the pressure from them,’’ Palino clarified after the debate.

‘‘Pretty much anybody has the authority to arrest somebody if they’re a criminal, technically. So they’ll have the authority to arrest people, basically detectives.’’

‘‘It’ll be people who have been trained in the police force, who have the experience into research and finding criminals. I think Auckland Council has got some responsibility to the people to partake in something like that.’’

Phil Goff said attacks on people from ‘‘ethnic communities, Indian and Chinese in particular’’ by adolescents could be solved with an increased police presence.

‘‘We grow by 45,000 a year but our police force in the last five years has grown by how much one extra police officer a year,’’ Goff said.

Vic Crone said legislating to protect Auckland minorities, and females, from crime would only be achieved if a council was elected that better reflected these demographics.

‘‘As I go across Auckland, what I hear the feedback on is that females don’t feel safe in public transport, some ethnic groups don’t feel safe, like the Chinese, and the other group that doesn’t feel safe is people living in South Auckland. Now are those people in our council? No, they’re not.’’

A spate of attacks on Asian students at the start of this year led to a 7500 strong petition to the New Zealand Parliament to bring a Safer New Zealand to International Students.

In one week in Auckland in March this year there were four aggravated robberies on Asian international students. Most recently, on September 14, was the violent carjacking of Nancy Voon in Panmure, who migrated from Malaysia to Auckland in 1991. Voon’s daughter Carmen Phua said she was worried other elderly, Asian people could be victimised.