More police priority—National

Press, 8 September 1989, Page 4

More police priority—National

By

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington An extra 900 police within three years of National taking office have been promised by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger. He told a meeting convened in Porirua to protest against police cuts that policing was a priority and that National would grant the police “all reasonable requests” for the resources needed to fight the rising tide of crime. But the Minister of Police, Mr Douglas, said the promise of 900 extra police was “a knee-jerk reaction” typical of National’s history of

making promises to increase expenditure without taking the trouble to analyse the problem first. Mr Bolger said the cost of extra police would have to be found as a matter of priority. The community had to put resources into the police. “I have seen many strange things in Parliament,” he said, “but nothing so strange as a Government reducing the number of sworn police officers when crime wqas on the increase in New Zealand.” National would amalgamate the police force with the traffic officers to make more efficient use of the resources. Mr Douglas said politicians had to

do their homework properly. For example, it had to be at least vaguely relevant that a recent study by the Institute of Criminology claimed that changes in police numbers and resources had had little impact on crime volume. As Minister of Police he did not yet know if this claim by the Institute was correct, but at least the evidence should be worked through. “Leaping up and down in front of an excited public meeting and throwing money about is not automatically going to solve the crime problem or give us better policing,” Mr Douglas said.