$550 million for police, anticrime initiatives
AUCKLAND: More than $550 million in funding for more frontline police, a new firearms unit and a package to help businesses protect themselves from ram raids was promised yesterday in a Government Budget preannouncement.
Police Minister Poto Williams made the announcements in Auckland alongside Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis and Justice Minister Kris Faafoi.
Police and Corrections will get $562 million over four years.
Ms Williams said there would be help to support businesses to protect themselves from ram raiders — an increasing problem in recent months.
Ms Williams said the ministers were working on what measures it would offer, but had more work to do including consulting small businesses.
‘‘We will be taking action to combat the recent rise in ram raids. Similar to the process that supported the installation of 1000 fog cannons in retail outlets, we will help highrisk businesses protect themselves from ram raiders,’’ Ms Williams said.
‘‘Ram raids are a serious issue and we need to deal with it.’’
She said it was now outside the period in which the Budget was set, so funding was yet to be allocated.
‘‘We are working at speed to put this in place.’’
Ms Williams said including ram raid action in the announcement yesterday despite not having a Budget allocation for it was to send a commitment to business that the Government would work on the issue.
The package includes $94 million for efforts to tackle gangs and organised crime — which Ms Williams said was on top of the current gang operations, Operation Tauwhiro and the newly launched Operation Cobalt.
Ms Williams said the arrival of ‘‘501s’’ from Australia had made organised crime ‘‘more overt and sophisticated’’.
She said the Government would work to address ‘‘social factors’’ around why people joined gangs in the first place.
Operation Tauwhiro and Operation Cobalt were mainly about enforcement and trying to disrupt gangs.
As part of the package, $208 million will go for a new firearms unit within police, which Ms Williams said was a followthrough to the ban on semiautomatic weapons and tightening of gun registration laws.
‘‘The unit will have oversight of implementing the significant and ongoing Arms Act legislative changes which overseas examples tell us are central to reducing gun crime,’’ she said.
‘‘It will be a dedicated firearms regulator’’ and would be responsible for tracing the origin of firearms used in offences and monitoring the register.
Ms Williams said there was 30year deficit in which there had not been such a register. A register was one of the recommendations of the review after the Christchurch mosque terror shootings.
A further $164.6 million in operating cash and $20.7 million capital funding over four years would be used to expand the Tactical Response Model which ensures police are trained and equipped to the standard of the armed offenders squad officers.
Ms Williams said the first priority for the police budget was increasing the number of police on the front line — and keeping them high.
‘‘When we took office, turning around declining police numbers was our number one priority. Once we achieve our goal of an extra 1800 police officers later this year, we will ensure numbers don’t fall away again by maintaining an ongoing ratio of one police officer to every 480 New Zealanders.
She said the previous policy of 1800 more police would be reached by the end of this year — six months earlier than planned.
The package will put $198.3 million into rehabilitation and programmes that break the cycle of offending as well as funding for 518 extra Corrections staff over the next four years to support rehabilitation. A further 100 Corrections staff would be recruited for women’s prisons.
Corrections Minister Kelvin Davis said it was also important to try to break the cycle of crime.
He said the increase in youth crime and ram raids was a spike but not a trend. Asked if he believed the same was true of brazen gang warfare, he said he didn’t want to speculate.
Justice Minister Kris Faafoi said there were now 1411 more police on the front line than when Labour took office in 2017 — the highest number in history. He said youth crime had also dropped and there were 3083 fewer people in our prisons. —