Police

Click here to return to the policy homepage.

• Assist the police when dealing with youth offenders by relaxing age related restrictions placed upon them when processing youth offenders.
• Establish community wardens to operate in the same manner Maori wardens do now. (more here)

• Work towards the creation of an Office of Public Prosecutions, similar to that found in some overseas jurisdictions, to avoid police conflicts of interest in the handling of prosecutions.
• Support a dedicated and well-trained victim support unit working with police and other agencies, ensuring both protection and healing (through a restorative justice approach.
• Encourage police recruitment from a range of ethnic groups.
• Encourage positive interaction between the police and communities by establishing community liaison groups.
• Establish a truly independent police complaints authority, with adequate investigatory staff of its own, so that it does not have to rely on police investigators. (more here)

• Labour will remove the “sinking lid” policy on non-sworn staff and make sure that their talents and skills are used to free up Police officers for frontline work.
• Labour will ensure that Youth Service roles within Police are fully staffed and long- term vacancies are not carried.
• Labour will work in partnership with iwi to facilitate the development of Alternative Actions programmes that are designed by Maori, for Maori children and young people.
• Labour supports the Mobility work stream and will assist Police embed the use of mobility devices in order to efficiently and effectively keep our communities safe.
• Labour will continue to evaluate the various alternative approaches to dealing with organised crime, and implement a tougher set of measures that effectively target the members of organised criminal groups. (more here)

• Increase the emphasis on community approaches in the police, including working closely with Māori police liaison groups, and for police training to include an understanding of the impacts of colonization on Māori and how to break the cycle of institutional racism in policing.
• Restructure the Independent Police Complaints Authority as a truly independent body whose decisions can be appealed, and with an autonomous Māori investigative branch to review Māori complaints against, and Māori relationships with, the Police. (more here)

• Dis-establish the Independent Police Conduct Authority and transfer its functions to the Anti-Corruption Commission. (more here)

• Creating a multi-agency Gang Intelligence Centre to combine intelligence on gang activity and support investigation, prevention, and enforcement. (more here)

• End the use of sole-charge police stations. We will provide minimum double staffing of all existing sole-charge stations. Sufficient additional Police will be recruited and trained to meet such requirements.
• Put extra police on the beat and more patrol cars on the road, day and night.  End the use of single-staffing of patrol cars on routine and scheduled patrol at night. We will provide minimum double-manning of all such marked and front-line police vehicles. Sufficient additional police will be recruited and trained to meet these requirements.
• Officially separate Traffic Police from General Duties Police.
• Provide proper and adequate resourcing for Community Policing, including Māori Wardens, Pasifika Wardens, and Neighbourhood Watch.
• Review police pay and conditions with the goal of achieving parity with those in Australia. (more here)

• Ensure adequate police coverage of rural areas.
• Establish community safety plans with police, local bodies and communities, building off local knowledge and community relationships, and ensure that all households can receive information about local policing issues.
• Ensure that police target and monitor the persistent criminals in our communities, particularly gangs.
• Ensure that police co-ordinate closely with social service and child protection agencies in each community, including automatic referral of any criminal activity that involves children, to improve responses to domestic violence and child abuse.
• Establish a transparent Police staffing formula that ensures a minimum presence in all areas, yet allows for extra police to be re-deployed where the crime rate exceeds the national average. (more here)