Resourcing Excellence - Turnaround in Otara
The extra staff poured into Counties-Manukau combined with smart policing, are starting to turn around Otara’s reputation as a high-crime neighbourhood, Police and community presenters told the Association’s Annual Conference last month.
Otara Community Board member and active community leader Poutua Papalii has grown up and lived in Otara since the 1960s. He has witnessed the changing character of the area over the last 40-plus years, including the development of its popular perception as a high-crime area.
Things are now improving, thanks in large part to the smart deployment of 300 extra police over the last three years. In 2008, the only time you would see police in Otara was when they were chasing or arresting someone, Mr Papalii said. As a result, the community did not know how to relate to police officers, or have any confidence in how to go about asking for help and advice.
Since the extra resources have been put into Otara, the everyday police presence has increased. Importantly, and largely due to the Neighbourhood Policing Team (NPT) working with community leaders like Mr Papalii, it has been a positive presence where officers are engaging with community members as citizens rather than only as victims or offenders.
Chasing tails
Constable Aron Singh has also witnessed the turnaround. “When I started in 2008 on response in South Auckland, there were not enough units to respond to P1s (Priority One emergency calls). We had a Sergeant and two I-Cars (Incident Cars) chasing their tails.”
As a result, units would constantly arrive late to jobs, leaving the community dissatisfied, and sometimes placing staff at risk. “We would have two officers turn up to a disorder involving twenty to thirty people armed with bats and other weapons,” Constable Singh said.
Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Glossop of Counties Manukau CIB has also seen the change, from both response and CIB perspectives. He pointed out the stress on GDB response units had knock-on effects on Police’s ability to get on top of crime. “When you are rushing from one job to the next, you don’t have time to lock people up because you’re needed on the street. You don’t have time to take proper statements at the time of the incident and that creates problems for CIB investigations later on.”
Nuisance crime
Before the extra resources were brought in, “nuisance” serious crime would constantly tie up scarce CIB resources. “Things like gang-related serious violence and robberies would mean staff had to be pulled off other files to investigate,” Mr Glossop said. These spontaneous but serious matters meant other files constantly had to be parked instead of being progressed in a timely fashion.
Police were clearly under resourced, but at the same time, they knew that simply increasing numbers and doing the same things would never allow them to get on top of the problem. There would always be more jobs than they could deal with.
Quick wins
With extra resources, Counties Manukau police were able to trial new approaches. ‘Quick wins’ were possible because – without reducing existing sections – police were able to set up new teams to open up a second front on crime in the District. These included a Major Crime Team to provide an initial CIB response to the serious “nuisance” crime which would otherwise have forced a whole CIB squad to drop their existing files to investigate.
Public Safety Teams (PSTs) were also set up, which were able to respond to the jobs I-Cars couldn’t attend. Combined with re-rostering, the PSTs meant the ‘sergeant plus two or three (I-Cars)’ shifts instead had as many as ‘four plus eight’ units available. That meant minor disorders were dealt with before they escalated into serious P1s which would have demanded I-Cars drop other jobs to respond. PSTs were also able to engage in hot-spot policing and self-initiated arrests to remove offenders from the street. This in turn led to a major and immediate reduction in the “nuisance” serious crime.
With quick wins under their belt, Counties- Manukau police were able to take the next step by setting up Neighbourhood Policing Teams (NPTs).
Neighbourhood Policing
Constable Singh works on the Otara NPT and has recently been Acting Sergeant on the team. They have focused on getting into the community to get alongside the ‘good people’ who suffer at the hands of the small but intimidating criminal element. By building trust and understanding their concerns, they have been able to get the community working with Police to take the Otara streets back from the gangs.
A good example has been the Everitt Road shops. These used to be covered in gang tags and dominated by the Killer Beez gang, to the point where locals were afraid to allow their children to go to the local dairy. Working with the community and supported with materials donated by Bunnings, the NPT has cleaned up the shops and cleared the gangs out. Local youths who used to be responsible for much of the graffiti have instead been engaged in painting murals on the walls. The result: kids seeing for the first time how good their community can look, and community pride instead of fear.
Detective Senior Sergeant Glossop admits some of the ‘old hands’ had to eat humble pie after seeing the value of NPTs. “There was initially a feeling it would be a bit ‘tree-huggy’, but it’s not like that. They are solving crime by targeting problems, and delivering excellent intelligence because the community is now engaged and responsive,” Mr Glossop said.
No silver bullet
However, the extra resources have not been a “silver bullet”, community leader Poutua Papalii cautioned. In 2008, the big crime issues in Otara were youth crime, alcohol, gangs, and domestic violence. Three years on, while big improvements have been made, those are still serious issues in the community. The more important change, however, has been in the Police relationship with and presence within the community.
Considerable focus has been put on building Neighbourhood Support Groups. “The community is reporting more, trusting more, and helping more. The people now have a greater belief that Police are there to help them,” Mr Papalii said. As a result, the confidence of the community has been lifted – not only in Police, but also in themselves.
Mr Glossop agreed that success in Otara is not just down to the extra resources. While you need to be able to maintain the core and build around that to get onto the front foot, smart policing and leadership which “stepped up” have also been crucial to the “excellent recipe” developed in Counties Manukau over the last few years.
“Where we were just mowing lawns, now we’re using Round Up,” Detective Senior Sergeant Glossop said. “But we could not have done it without the staff.”
Following the presentation on the Otara success story, Conference passed the following motion: “That this conference recognises and endorses the increase in staff numbers in Counties Manukau, and the strategic use of these staff to improve policing in Counties Manukau. This conference encourages Government and Police to make the same investment in all other Police Districts to enable them to make the same improvements to their communities.”
