A beach-head for crime

Press, 12 August 1985, Page 12

A beach-head for crime

Crime appears to have secured a beach-head in the sandhills north of Waimairi Beach. Rapes, assaults, and the stripping of stolen motor vehicles are reported to be frequent crimes on the reserve land between the Waimairi Golf Course and the beach. Each week up to four cars are abandoned north of Ballance Street, usually stripped for parts and their shells burned. The police have difficulty patrolling the area, known to its denizens as the “Desert Road,” and their efforts seem to be restricted mainly to the summer. The Waimairi District Council has withdrawn its rangers from the sandhills because of fears for their safety. Councillors have been worried by criminal and anti-social activities in this area for some time. Their disquiet led to the withdrawal of the rangers in November last year, on the advice of the police, after threats and attacks on rangers’ vehicles. The council has considered restricting access to the area, but cannot legally put a barrier across the access road. A barrier, in any event, would serve only to stop the law abiding citizen and to provide a challenge for the unsavoury element that now monopolises what should be a valuable recreational asset for the public as a whole. The police have their problems. The nature of the terrain in the area makes it difficult to catch offenders. Patrol vehicles are often stranded and suffer undue wear and tear. During the summer a four-wheel-drive vehicle patrols the area; but this approach is considered neither practical nor warranted all

year round. When a police force is under strain from mounting crime and a shortage of staff — as New Zealand’s police force undoubtedly is — and when priorities must be assigned to police work according to the immediacy and seriousness of actual events — constant police surveillance of the sandhills is patently out of the question.

The result must be a shortening of the law’s arm, or at least a weakening of its grasp. When the police cannot act and the council’s officers dare not act, the community is forced to withdraw, abandoning the marches to outlawry. If this seems too strong a judgment, just consider the crippling fear of crime — however unreasonable in terms of statistical probability — which now puts these sandhills “out of bounds” to normal, decent citizens any time after early evening. An attractive recreation area is turning into a “no-go” zone.

Surrendering the integrity of the rule of law and of social order — even though it be just a little — might seem the cheapest or most convenient way of dealing with an awkward problem. The fastness of a castle keep might seem preferable to the task of restoring order in some unimportant part of the hinterland. Those who subscribe to this theory should note two things: castle walls are rarely impregnable, and once a castle’s inhabitants choose to raise the drawbridge against the world outside they become prisoners of the scoundrels they would exclude.