Heather du Plessis-Allan: Our crime problems won't be fixed overnight

I was very interested in that Auckland Central crime meeting with the Police Minister last night. If it wasn’t that the thing was scheduled for 6:30, when this show was still on air, I would've gone along.

I actually got Mark Mitchell's flyer in the letterbox inviting me to come along, cause I live in Auckland Central. And because I work in Auckland Central, I care very deeply about the crime in my neighbourhood, and I'm not happy about it - at all.

We live within hearing of the Ponsonby shooting which happened a few weeks back, we constantly have unsavoury characters loitering on our street doing god knows what, we've got a couple of guys who’ve pitched a tent in the local park - they’ve been there for months - smoking weed flagrantly.

I make a conscious decision at night-time to drive distances that I can actually walk simply because I don't think it's safe when it's dark.

So as an Auckland Central resident, I want something done, and I want it done fast.

And I realise there are some people who came out of that meeting unimpressed and unhappy - but I've actually got a slightly more optimistic take on it.

At least Mark Mitchell acknowledges there's a problem. That is a massive change from Ginny Andersen's approach as Labour’s Police Minister.

She spent amazing amounts of energy and time pretending we didn’t have a crime problem. According to her, we just had a better app for reporting crime, which is why the numbers were up. Which is just a load of bollocks.

Having Mark Mitchell front up to meetings in his evenings when he is already an MP of his own electorate - plus he's a very busy Cabinet Minister - it's impressive.

I think we’ve got to be a little realistic: this is not going to change overnight. Mark Mitchell is turning around 6 years of neglect of our inner cities, where the previous Government filled them with homeless people and then pretended there wasn’t a crime problem.

He's only been in the job for 7 months, give him a moment.

He knows what the fix is, and that's the important thing. And that's more police on the beat.

Already, there are noticeably more. One of my colleagues who lives nearby says he sees them all the time, but there aren't enough. Because I don't see them all the time.

So yes, there’s room for improvement - and there'd better be improvement - but for now I'm seeing enough good signs.

Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.