Suicides concern Porirua police

Inspector Paul Basham told Porirua City councillors some truths about his police district last week.

The Kapiti Mana Police area commander made a presentation to the council, outlining strategies his staff are undertaking.

These include working on the five biggest areas of concern for police in Porirua: youth, family violence, alcohol, drugs and road policing.

Basham said people under 21 committed 33 per cent of the overall crime in Porirua, 51 per cent of dishonesty offences and 23 per cent of violent offences.

Overall crime was down 18 per cent in the city, largely in line with national statistics, Basham said.

Public place assaults had fallen 40 per cent in the past year – much of this to do with the foot patrols that police in Porirua now carry out, he said. These have risen from 163 in 2008/09 to more than 2700 in the past year.

One huge area of concern, however, was the upward surge in attempted suicides.

‘‘They are up 35 per cent in the past year. What something like this does is take a patrol car and two officers off the street for sometimes an entire shift. That’s a huge use of time and resources.

‘‘So mental health issues are becoming more key for us to tackle.’’

‘‘Hot suburbs’’ – where police callouts were frequent – at the moment were Cannons Creek and Ranui, with Tawa having a spike lately, Basham said.

Sergeant Jonathan Westrupp also outlined a strategy to tackle crime in the CBD.

Police were in the process of analysing surveys carried out by Porirua Community Guardians, who spoke to retailers, building owners and other related groups on how to make the area safer.