Farmer angry at lack of police action

Press, 1 August 1989, Page 4

Farmer angry at lack of police action

PA Whangarei A Maunganui Bluff farmer, Mr Alan Titford, is threatening to dig sixmetre wide ditches across the access road to the west coast beach settlement at the centre of a Waitangi Tribunal hearing.

Mr Titford was planning to complain to the Minister of Police, that the police did not respond to his call for help on Sunday after a fence-cutting incident.

On Saturday, farmers removed items, including two toilets, a shed, caravan and an old railway hut from his land. The area had been used as a public camping ground, he said. “I got permission from the police to remove them from my property and put everything on a dead-end road,” he said. “We pulled one of my fences down to get the stuff out and put the fence back when we finished.” Mr Titford said he dis-

covered on Sunday that the fence was cut on Saturday night in about 15 places. It was the boundary fence on a paddock holding 200 head of stock.

“I asked the police for assistance, but no one bothered coming out. The police are not doing their job and it leaves me no alternative than to go to the Minister,” he said. Mr Titford said if he could not get a response from Mr Tapsell, he would consider closing the road to the bluff, where it crosses his property. “There wouldn’t be any use in fencing it off because the fences will be cut. Digging six-metre ditches across the road may be the only way out of it,” he said. “I have had enough of the harassment. The Government keeps saying that freehold land is exactly that, My land is freehold, but no one will leave me alone. Where is the justice?”