Hey, coppers, where have you all gone?

• Published date: 27 May 2023
• Publication title: Weekend Herald

She’s been out on the circuit, putting out press releases and doing interviews. She’s been celebrating the additional 1800 recruits who have joined the police force, and in doing so congratulating herself and her Government colleagues for the fact that the people feel safer

Except we don’t. There is plenty of spin from this government. Some of it, they get away with. But this one won’t fly.

The reason? We don’t feel safer. In fact, it’s worse than that: some of us are downright scared. Scared to walk home from school. Scared to go to the supermarket. Scared to walk down the street or to catch a bus.

There’s one thing more important than anything else. More important than healthcare. More important than education. Even more important than the roading networks that frustrate our everyday lives.

What’s so important? We all want to feel safe. The purpose of law and order is to ensure that. And at the moment we don’t.

As I mentioned in my last column, we had a few days in Perth, Western Australia a couple of weeks ago. When the business end of the trip was complete, my wife and I went out for dinner on the Friday night. After a nice meal, we went for a walk around the city before returning to our hotel.

The temperature, although cold by their standards, was pleasant enough for a couple of Aucklanders who’ve become sick of the rain. We walked for an hour or so. The streets were well-lit and clean. There were plenty of people around.

There were groups of people in their late teens and early 20s.

They’d had a few drinks, some of them, but their mates were looking after those who’d gone a bit hard. They wore colourful clothing, seemed happy and were well-behaved.

There was another group of people out there too. Police. Lots of them. Two or three on every corner. Standing around, chatting to the people. Some of them had high-tech mountain bikes for transport. That caught our eye and we chatted for 20 minutes about the bikes and how and why they used them.

I mentioned that everything seemed “pretty quiet tonight”.

“It always is”, the taller cop said. “Until about 2am. Then the dickheads come out of the bars and need a bit of help getting on their way.” He gave the impression that the “help” was probably not a pleasant experience for the aforementioned “dickheads”.

But here’s the point: it was Friday night in the CBD. And we felt safe.

A week later, just eight days ago, it was another Friday night. We went into the city to see the Great Comedy Debate at Sky City. We...