Heather du Plessis-Allan: Our crime problems won't be fixed overnight

I was very interested in that Auckland Central crime meeting with the Police Minister last night. If it wasn’t that the thing was scheduled for 6:30, when this show was still on air, I would've gone along.

I actually got Mark Mitchell's flyer in the letterbox inviting me to come along, cause I live in Auckland Central. And because I work in Auckland Central, I care very deeply about the crime in my neighbourhood, and I'm not happy about it - at all.

We live within hearing of the Ponsonby shooting which happened a few weeks back, we constantly have unsavoury characters loitering on our street doing god knows what, we've got a couple of guys who’ve pitched a tent in the local park - they’ve been there for months - smoking weed flagrantly.

I make a conscious decision at night-time to drive distances that I can actually walk simply because I don't think it's safe when it's dark.

So as an Auckland Central resident, I want something done, and I want it done fast.

And I realise there are some people who came out of that meeting unimpressed and unhappy - but I've actually got a slightly more optimistic take on it.

At least Mark Mitchell acknowledges there's a problem. That is a massive change from Ginny Andersen's approach as Labour’s Police Minister.

She spent amazing amounts of energy and time pretending we didn’t have a crime problem. According to her, we just had a better app for reporting crime, which is why the numbers were up. Which is just a load of bollocks.

Having Mark Mitchell front up to meetings in his evenings when he is already an MP of his own electorate - plus he's a very busy Cabinet Minister - it's impressive.

I think we’ve got to be a little realistic: this is not going to change overnight. Mark Mitchell is turning around 6 years of neglect of our inner cities, where the previous Government filled them with homeless people and then pretended there wasn’t a crime problem.

He's only been in the job for 7 months, give him a moment.

He knows what the fix is, and that's the important thing. And that's more police on the beat.

Already, there are noticeably more. One of my colleagues who lives nearby says he sees them all the time, but there aren't enough. Because I don't see them all the time.

So yes, there’s room for improvement - and there'd better be improvement - but for now I'm seeing enough good signs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On that subject, I was really interested in that Auckland
Central crime meeting with the Police Minister last night. If
it wasn't that the thing was scheduled at half past six,
when this show was still on the air, I would
have actually gone along because I got Mark Mitchell's flyer
in the letterbox inviting me to come along. I live
in Auckland Central, and also because I work in Auckland
Central as well. I really care very very deeply about

(00:20):
the crime in my neighborhood. I'll tell you what, I
am not happy about it at all. We live within
hearing of the Ponsonbye Road shooting which happened a few
weeks back. We constantly have unsavory characters just loitering on
our street at the moment doing god knows what. Got
a couple of guys who pitched a tent in the
local park and seem to live there. They've been there
for like quite a few months now. Sometimes they just

(00:42):
smoke weed, smoke weed or a quite fragrant flagrantly out there.
I made a conscious decision about a month ago that
at nighttime now I'm not going to drive. I'm not
going to walk distances that I can very comfortably walk.
I'm going to drive them instead because I just don't
think it's safe anymore when it's dark. So I want
something done. As an Allclane Central resident, I want something done,
and I want something done really, really quickly. And I

(01:03):
realize that there are some people who came out of
that meeting last night feeling much the same as me,
and feeling as she's quite unimpressed and unhappy with what
they heard there. But I have got a slightly more
optimistic take on it after what was said at that meeting.
At least Mark Mitchell acknowledges that there is a problem.
That is a massive change from what we heard from
Ginny Anderson when she was the Labour Police Minister. She

(01:24):
spent amazing amounts of time just pretending we didn't have
a crime problem. Do you remember that she'd just said,
oh no, we just got this fantastic new app that
allows us to report more crimes, so we're getting more reports,
but there's not actually more crime, which is just a
load of bollocks and we all knew that. And having
Mark Mitchell actually front up to meetings in his evenings
when he is already an MP of his own electorate
plus he's a very busy cabinet minister. Is actually, I

(01:45):
think very impressive, and I think we've got to be
a little bit realistic about this. This is not going
to be fixed overnight. Mark Mitchell is turning around six
years of neglect of our inner cities with a previous
government filled them with homeless people and then pretended there
wasn't crime problem. He's only been in the job seven months.
Give him a moment. He knows what the fixes and
this is the important thing. He knows how to fix it.
More police on the beat Already there are noticeably more.

(02:10):
One of my colleagues who lives nearby says he sees
them out all the time, but there aren't enough because
I don't see them all the time and I don't
live that far away. So yes, absolutely there's room for improvement,
and I'll tell you what they're better be improvement. But
for now I'm seeing enough good signs to have some heart.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
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