You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News talks'd be yes, And.
The government is celebrating a drop in the Auckland CBD crime rates and there's less emergency housing being utilized now. So new statistics show twenty two percent drop and serious assaults in the Auckland CBD over the past year, eighteen percent drop in serious assaults resulting in injury. It looks as though recent changes to combat violent crime have been impactful. But where to from here? And Police Minister Mark Mitchell
is with me now, Good afternoon. By the way, I enjoyed that piece in the Herald about your nice good bit of timing there reminiscing about the old days. Do you do you think about those days much?
You know?
The dogs? It's very nice of you. I haven't read that. I've had some look, of course I do. I mean I love my police and career and I love my time on the dog section in the Aos and yeah, so it was I've sort of been pushing that off for a bit two months, but I finally willed to be said, okay, I am.
Actually the photo of you with your dogs are man. That was one big pooch whoa he's huge.
He was. He was a big guy. Believe it. I could feel it when I had to pick him up and throw him over a fenceets for.
Real good stuff. Anyway, it's amusing here people go and read it's a great, great profile piece on that mark. But right now onto the serious stuff. So serious assaults are down twenty two percent. Violent incidents like shootings and stabbings are well, they're still in the headlines.
I guess the.
Question is mark your reaction to the stats, but also are we feeling safer?
Look, we've still got a long way to go. We acknowledged that. But the good news is, and we think that we should actually highlight the fact that we've got a much more joined up approach now in the way that we're dealing with this. We've obviously focused on the auction CVD because we've just seen so much andy soshal and violent behavior and drug dealing and all the other sort of stuff that has been deeply concerning to the residents and obviously the shopkeepers and retailers, and so we
just seen we've seen some early results. It's too early for celebration, but we're definitely moving in the right direction and we know we've got more work to do.
Actually talk about that collaboration because I can imagine it's it feels like the right thing to say, to talk about the cooperation between police and social services. What do you think the real the main cause of this reduction in crime? Is it just cops on the beat or is it the whole shebang?
So it's a combination of things. The police could not get on top of this problem by themselves and it became very apparent to me as the incoming milit so that everyone was off working in their own silos and it wasn't joined up. So I have called a meeting. It's Auckland COUNCILORSVIVED involved kind of or a ministry of social development, residents and rape pays groups, Business Association's Heart of the City, all of our social service providers, you
know our Mary Warden's CPNZ. Well we all come together now I call that meeting and chare it once a month. We're all working together with a joined up strategy and it's working.
As with the you and that's there. You've got twenty one more officers in Auckland CBD on the beat. I think is the presence of police on the beat. What's the main point of that. Is it about us seeing them and feeling safer, Is it about quick response time or is it about the presence and reducing the impetus for crime.
That's definitely part of it, high visibility and reassurance. Without a doubt, there is also a prevention element to it. They possible get to know their patch, they take on of shi it, they understand what the drivers of crime are in the area. They get to know personally who the people that are causing the problems, and it's been very effective and we've seeing that in some of the results now that are starting to flow through. You know, I want to acknowledge the big constables through out there
doing that job. They've been been outstanding job. They've had targets set for them, our meeting those targets, and the feedback that I get from them, tim is that they're actually totally enjoying it because the nature of police which is that it can be very negative, whereas they're really enjoying the public interaction and the positive feedback that they're getting.
So it's nice to see them back out there and without a doubt, I mean, we're not reinventing the wheel here, it's just back to basics police, and.
What about rolling this approach out around the country and other places? Are you looking at sort of? I mean, obviously it's an operational decision up to a point, isn't it.
No, we are doing that. We're out of doubt. So there's been additional beach staff put into both Wellington and Canterbury and where we can. Of course, we want to see a continued beat presence and our provincial towns and our rural towns. No, it's not contained to Auckland at all. But obviously there's been a big focus on just because of the rapid deterioration over the last few years and we had to reverse that.
Of course, we have had some terrible headlines. It seems there's a shooting or a stabbing or something every week or maybe even more frequently. Where are we at with being able to get on top of that sort of stuff and is that mostly gang related or what?
So it's been a very tough sort of ten days two weeks in terms of the homicides that we've seen. Most of those are contained. They're awful, but most of them are contained. And by what by that. What I mean is that the people know each other. It's not necessarily out in the public. It could be awful domestic violence, which of course we're able to do something around our family harm, the rape of family harm in this country.
Or it might be gangs fighting with each other. But without a doubt, we've seen you know that in the last ten days, we've seen that real spike. The police are working very hard, but of course they don't always have the answer to these things. They are contained when it might be a family violence type situation. But certainly
we're standing up our Social Investment Agency. We're starting to get a lot more aligned with other agencies to try and see the red flags and indicators and get in there much earlier to prevent these sorts of thing Senter.
What about minor assaults? Where we are we at with that? Because you see you bus drivers are soldiers here, someone's punched in a park somewhere else Where are we at with the minor assaults? Or now, don't I say minor but they're not serious.
Look, I can't give you the dath on minor assaults. I know that we've seen ram raids, aggravated robberies and knife crime come down for acervative robberies down about ten percent, knife crime down about ten percent, but still an unacceptable rate of general assaults. You're on our buses which were seeing and look, we just sort of we take this here at tolerance to it and and you know, these
are the things that we're really focused on on. Fire free up police hours, get them focused back on their core role, and you know, and we just but we look, there's been a huge growth over the last six years. I'm not trying to diminish the job that we've got in front of us, but the good but the good thing is as we're starting to see some early positive results.
Uh just don't know on my personal side of things, like so, I've had a big response from parents and my daughter's school group because they were subject on an assault where we put out this thing for all the kids, do you want to do a self defense course? Every parent and every kid said yes, which back when I was growing up, we never would have dreamed about it. So where are we at with with trying to get
on top of that. I don't know whether it's just an impression, but it feels that society, regardless of the stabbings is just more violent. There's more violent assaults. Is more the casual nature of it. What's your take on.
That, Well, I think there is a casual nature to it because not one, there's been no consequences. Number two, when you look at the social media and content that young people are sort of engaging with now, and the fact that we've just got to implement standards and so that you know, I'm sorry, like I said to you, a zero tolerance towards any type of assault, which is what we should be. That's the position we should be taken as a society, and slowly we'll start to roll
this stuff back. You need very strong leaderships, leadership within the schools, You need parents to step up and support that. You need strong leadership through your central government agencies, from local government, from community based organizations to be for us ought to be aligned to say, you know what, we're going to adopt some standards of this country, and one of them is that assaulting people is no longer acceptable.
Is that anything you need to specifically legislate for with the courts.
Around consequences, we are having to do that. We're making changes to the sentence in act. We're saying that we're going to cap discounts to forty percent because we felt very strongly as the incoming government that the seriousness of the offending was not being reflected in the consequences and the sentences. So yes, we are having to make some changes to legislation now.
And new powers for police. What's on the horizon.
So there's some new powers for police that should be really in November. It's a suite of new powers around the policing gangs, anty social behavior, taking over public roads, intimidation of the public. Of course, we're banning their gang patches. We're going to have non consulting orders which will stop them from being able to get organized around the next and the furious activities. So yes, there are a suite of new laws coming out, new pairs for police.
Excellent. Well, it's good to celebrate some results on that serious crime stuff. So I appreciate your time, staff.
Non Mark, thanks handing me on.
Cheers, Thanks very much. Yeah, go get a copy of the new's thee on Herold. It's a good piece. It's an interesting piece, just talking about his time and the Umdefender Squad and the dog squad. But I'll tell you what you check out that photo of him next to his dogs. Are that dog was?
For more from the Weekend Collective. Listen live to news talks It'd be weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio