Mayor’s take on crime problems
“I went out on a reasonably rare occasion to dinner at the Viaduct Basin and walked up Queen St at midnight a few weeks ago, and it was a pretty lonely place.
You didn’t feel very safe, because there weren’t people around if something happened.
The people who used to be around and occupying the city centre, people on working holidays who were staying at backpackers, international students staying at hostels, international tourists staying at all the hotels, they are not there.
Replacing those people, you’ve had people with pronounced social problems. So the houses that used to be used for the students might be used for people that have got drug, alcohol addiction problems, mental health problems.
And then on top of that, you’ve got the 501s from Australia, bringing in their gang connections.
So what have we done? We’ve pushed really hard with central government. We have got our policing numbers up and I’ve been pleased with the increase in police numbers.
But then Covid came along, and police were dissipated to MIQ facilities. Recently, they’ve been down in Wellington, dealing with the protests down there.
The police, like everybody else, catch Covid, their families catch Covid and they’re household contacts.
I was talking to our area commander, at one stage we were in danger of having 50 per cent of our police force doing other things or out of circulation.
Out on patrol at 1am in the city centre, I was told by a police officer that one of the big problems comes at about 3am when the bars start to empty people and people come out tanked up and spoiling for a fight.
Is this a new problem? No. Am I happy about some of the liquor outlets still being open and supplying grog at 10pm when people have run out of their supply and are tanking up from the off licence? No. Are we trying to do something about that? Yes. If the supermarket’s didn’t lock us into seven years of appeals to stop us implementing our local alcohol policy, we’ve just put a submission and the Government saying, you’ve got to change that, we need tighter control over alcohol, because that is fuelling some of the problem.
Firearms are another problem. I’m a firearms owner, I can tell you all the gaps and the loopholes that exist. I could go out and buy a score of high calibre weapons, and then I can sell them to the gang members, and there would be no record of what I’ve done. I’m all in favour of tighter controls on firearms. All it takes is one person that has a firearms license to buy the guns that can — albeit illegally — but with no record, pass the weapons on.
There has been 800 arrested under Operation Tauwhiro with 1000 firearms confiscated, $5 million worth of cash confiscated.
There are good things that are happening. But there is still a serious problem there.
I’m working with the local police, I meet regularly with the area commanders, I go out quite regularly on patrols with the cops late at night. So I’m aware of what’s happening on the ground. I convey my concerns to Ministers, I’ve got my officials at council working with social agencies, working with the University, working with government departments to say: what are the things that we next need to do? We are part of working together to find those solutions. But for all the reasons that I mentioned before, there have been aggravating factors that have come in that have probably affected the city centre more than almost anywhere else.”