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- By Sergeant Brett Meale of Howick Police
One of the priorities for our team in Counties Manukau East is to have ‘Safer Town Centres’.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen a surge in retail crime and anti-social, sometimes violent behaviour in and around our town centres.
Post-Covid 19, there have been some challenges for police, holding these offenders accountable and ensuring members of our community can feel safe when going about their business and doing their shopping.
Over the last 12 months, staff from all police workgroups have steadily contributed towards this priority.
Our investigators have arrested and charged many of the offenders who were ram-raiding at will, and this has seen a dramatic decrease in this type of offending.
Local police have made more foot patrols at our town centres, to increase our visibility in those areas and deter those intent on offending.
In conjunction with the National Retail Crime Unit, we’re targeting those responsible for recidivist shoplifting offences at our local businesses.
Several offenders have recently been arrested and charged with 12-15 offences each.
Although it’s resource intensive to gather the evidence to support these charges, we’ll continue to target those offending in our community, as in my experience holding offenders accountable is one of the best forms of crime prevention.
Around a year ago, an initial survey of community members was conducted seeking feedback on safety and security in town centres in Counties Manukau East.
The feedback from that survey helped shape our response to this priority during the last year.
We encouraged members of the community to provide updated feedback in a new survey for this current year as it helps us continue to shape our response to our priority of ‘Safer Town Centres’.
