Commissioner speaks against staff campaign

Press, 6 August 1987, Page 2

Commissioner speaks against staff campaign

PA Auckland The Commissioner of Police, Mr Mai Churches, has spoken out against the Police Association’s campaign to get 1000 extra officers on the country’s streets. The commissioner’s criticism came on the eve of a public meeting on violent crime in Auckland, at which one of the driving forces behind the staff campaign, the association’s president, Mr Keith Morrow, is to speak. Mr Churches said he agreed that more police were needed, but he disageed with the Police Association’s call for an extra 1000 staff and said he questioned the method chosen by the association to put pressure on the Government. Senior association

officials are addressing a series of public meetings in larger centres staged by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, a fundamentalist Christian-based group. The Minister of Police, Mrs Hercus, has also criticised the police union’s pairing with the coalition, and has described the association’s campaign as misleading and anti-Government. Mr Churches said his department’s case for additional resources had been put to Mrs Hercus “in the proper way”. “The Government has given us 388 (extra staff) in the last year. This will allow us to fill 100 extra community policing positions,” he said. Mr Churches said Police Association claims of a two-year waiting list

to join the police were nonsense. An intake of 95 recruits, scheduled for October would be filled, with possibly one or two applicants over, he said. A recruiting programme would be needed to fill the four intakes of 72 recruits planned for next year. The Police Association’s industrial advocate, Mr Graham Harding, has rejected Mrs Hercus’s claims that his organisation has political leanings. “It has no interest in setting up with any political party,” he said. “It angers us that what we are legitimately seeking is being reduced to some dirty little union demand.” The Opposition’s spokesman for police, Mr Don McKinnon, said the

Minister of Police should be listening to the Police Association instead of attempting “to shoot the messenger.” The association had never before campaigned for more resources, and Mrs Hercus should be taking it seriously rather than regarding its stand as purely political, Mr McKinnon said. “I have visited many police stations in recent weeks and am aware that due to the rising rate of serious criminal offences the police are falling more and more behind in the normal daily activity expected of them,” he said. If minor issues could not be attended to and the police physical presence was not what it should be, the public would lose faith in the police, he warned.