Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

John MacDonald: We've been conned on police numbers


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When you think of a police officer, do you think of someone out on the beat or cruising the streets in a patrol car?

Or do you think of someone who doesn’t have the power to arrest anyone and is pushing pens back in the office?

Because we’ve found out today that 270 of our 1800 new police officers - which the Government has been making a lot of noise about - won’t actually have the power to arrest anyone and will be working in an office.

They’re what’s called authorised officers and, pretty much, they have no more authority than you or me.

Do you think we’ve been conned by the Government? Bet your bottom dollar we have. And here’s the evidence, your honour.

How many times have we heard the Prime Minister and the Police Minister say that the Government has delivered on its promise of an additional 1800 police officers on the front line?

Thinking of that, knowing what we now know, it’s like when a court trial finishes and someone is found guilty and then they release the video footage from the original police interviews.

You watch them and you know they’re guilty, and you see them trotting out all sorts of stuff to the cops and you think to yourself ‘how the hell did he keep a straight face doing that?’.

That’s what it’s like thinking back to the Prime Minister and the Police Minister banging on about 1800 more officers "on the beat” and “on the frontline”.

We have been conned. There’s no other way to describe it.

And Megan Woods did nothing to convince me otherwise when she was on Newstalk ZB this morning.

Talk about weasel words. And trying to pull the old “you didn’t do any better when you were in government” line. Which wears pretty thin after nearly six years, doesn’t it?

But, where she started sounding really desperate, was when she said that this was all laid out in the Cabinet paper and it was all well-documented that not all of the 1800 would be out on the beat or not all of them would have the powers to arrest people.

Which I think just made matters worse because, if that’s the case, then the Prime Minister and lord-knows how many successive Police Ministers have been going off half-cocked with all their talk about 1800 new frontline cops.

But, irrespective of what might or might not have been written down in a Cabinet paper, we have been conned.

We’re not getting 1800 new frontline police officers, at all. We’re getting 1,530. We’ve been told 1800. But, in actual fact, it’s 1530.

In my book, when you’re promised one thing, but you get something else, it’s a rip-off.

Consumer NZ would say it was a rip-off if we were talking here about a household product or service.

But we’re not. We’re talking about something that the Police Minister has hung her hat on - who has been saying how safer we will be able to feel with 1800 extra officers on the front line.

Sorry Minister. People doubted you before. Today, they just won’t believe you. I don’t believe you.

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Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonaldBy Newstalk ZB


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