Getting action on rustling

Organised crime rears its head in every industry, but where it really impacts mine is stock theft.

What would really help my industry is that when we reported stock theft we had a rapid response from the police — we are often told quite publicly when you are a victim of crime to report it.

I have one incident on my books now of police not recording stock theft reported to them. I am flabbergasted.

The lack of care in recording crime sends multiple messages to the rural community, and none of those messages are positive.

I am told that in Wellington the police do take stock theft seriously, and want farmers to up their reporting. It seems this message has not filtered down to rural police, and is not a priority in their training.

Part of the problem is understaffing, but that is no excuse to not log reported incidents.

It is frustrating that in many areas stock theft seems to be given the lowest priority. That certainly isn’t Police HQ’s intention. Somewhere the message is being lost in translation.

This has consequences. Let’s start with people losing faith in the justice system, people not being able to claim insurance on lost stock, and let’s talk about the danger posed to the food chain if recently drenched stock are stolen and then taken into a commercial meat works.

I have one farmer who was able to supply hot leads to the police who has had his case forgotten about. He has had lambs stolen, and is sure he knows who has them. All the police would have to do to prove the case is run a DNA test against his ram and the stolen lambs.

I went into the Whanga¯rei central police station to see what was going on, and saw that in recent times no stock thefts had been recorded. That is not at all believable, so what is going on?

If thefts are not recorded our community will miss out on resources.

Is this a move to make it appear that Whanga¯rei has less crime then it does have? Who does that help? Not me. Not farmers. Not the wider community.

So this is my very public call to all farmers, not just Federated Farmers members, to come and talk to me if you have had stock stolen in the past six months.

Let’s get your thefts recorded. The police do have the tagline “Better work stories.” Imagine if it was “Solve crimes,” or at the very least, “Create paperwork so people can claim insurance.”

***

Federated Farmers’ Meat and Wool chairman Miles Anderson has put the cost of stock theft nationally at tens of millions of dollars every year. Thefts ranged from hundreds of animals taken in planned raids to thefts over time by staff, to the slaughter of cattle beasts and sheep in farm paddocks by opportunists looking for free meat. One rural insurer, FMG, had told a Federated Farmers’ rural security seminar it had paid out $22.4 million to farmers in a four-year period for insurance on stolen stock and gear.

"It is frustrating that in many areas stock theft seems to be given the lowest priority. That certainly isn’t Police HQ’s intention. Somewhere the message is being lost in translation."