The numbers out for retail crime this year make you weep.
In the three months to the end of April, there were 45,046 retail crimes reported.
Police attended 1 in 10 of them and made 1041 arrests.
Let that sink in. If you run a shop and you get burgled, maybe in even broad daylight, and you ring 111, you have just a one in ten chance of the police coming to your place and only a 2.3 percent chance that an alleged offender will be arrested.
That’s why we have a surge in retail crime.
The crims know they will get away with it. The spokesman for the Dairy Owners Association Sonny Kaushal said on Newstalk ZB that even as recently as 2015, there was a 50/50 chance of the offender being caught.
Now there’s a 97.7 percent chance the offender will get away.
Even the Police Association, the cops trade union, knows there’s a major problem.
They know that overall crime is up 22 percent in the last year, and they want more police out there doing something about it.
The Association is very suspicious about the number of people working at National Headquarters, and not on the frontline.
Even then, isn’t there way too much emphasis on traffic policing?
I live in the country, about 20 kilometres from the nearest town. Yet I reckon every trip I make to Cromwell, no matter the time of day, I will either encounter a patrol car coming the other direction or parked up on the side of the road with the radar on trying to ping a driver on a high quality state highway with low vehicle density for doing a few kilometres over the speed limit.
It’s an inefficient waste of resources.
Yes do traffic patrol a couple of days a week but why not put those cops on the beat somewhere? Make them present, make them visible on the country’s streets.
If we only catch 2 percent of the country’s retail criminals, how close are we to anarchy?
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack where this article was sourced.
That’s why we have a surge in retail crime.
The crims know they will get away with it. The spokesman for the Dairy Owners Association Sonny Kaushal said on Newstalk ZB that even as recently as 2015, there was a 50/50 chance of the offender being caught.
Now there’s a 97.7 percent chance the offender will get away.
Even the Police Association, the cops trade union, knows there’s a major problem.
They know that overall crime is up 22 percent in the last year, and they want more police out there doing something about it.
The Association is very suspicious about the number of people working at National Headquarters, and not on the frontline.
Even then, isn’t there way too much emphasis on traffic policing?
I live in the country, about 20 kilometres from the nearest town. Yet I reckon every trip I make to Cromwell, no matter the time of day, I will either encounter a patrol car coming the other direction or parked up on the side of the road with the radar on trying to ping a driver on a high quality state highway with low vehicle density for doing a few kilometres over the speed limit.
It’s an inefficient waste of resources.
Yes do traffic patrol a couple of days a week but why not put those cops on the beat somewhere? Make them present, make them visible on the country’s streets.
If we only catch 2 percent of the country’s retail criminals, how close are we to anarchy?
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
You've hit that squarely on the head, Peter. They have their priorities all wrong and the public have little faith in them.
A whole lot easier to beat the crap out of peaceful protestors than it is to protect Posie Parker or catch and prosecute crims. You just need to watch the performance of the Minister of Police/Justice in Parliament to see where the problem stems.
All by design.
Our country is truly in a bad way. Corruption, theft and moral decay at all levels of society.
The police have been told they have to give out tickets, regardless of whether they are traffic police or detectives. Just ridiculous, I’m sure they would rather being doing the job of catching a criminal!
All shoppers are paying for these shop lifts as all store just put extra costs on to cover the losses they suffer. I spoke to the local supermarket manager and he said in some cases 10 per cent more so these thieves are adding to inflation.
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