For New Zealand to become a ‘crime-free nirvana’ overnight is unrealistic: Police Minister

Police Minister Mark Mitchell is confident the government will deliver on its tough-on-crime promises, but says it is unrealistic to expect the situation to change overnight.

Last week, three jewelery stores were attacked: two in Auckland were attacked by masked robbers while customers were in the store; the third was in Whakatāne.

Indian jewelry store owners are disappointed that the government has failed to reduce crime amid a recent spate of aggravated robberies.

But Mitchell said Control The government was giving the police more powers.

However, he could not say when New Zealanders would start to see results.

“It’s not realistic that we’re going to have a crime-free nirvana overnight.

“It is vitally important that New Zealand begins to become one of the safest countries in the world.”

Mitchell said the social fabric had been “torn” where young people felt comfortable using guns and violence.

He said there were a number of levers that the retail and security sectors could pull.

Woolworths has begun trialling facial recognition technology, which Mitchell says has been successful.

“There are many things we can do in retail, policing, security and of course there is also an important role to play in social agencies in terms of dealing with the intergenerational harm that we continue to see and have to deal with. cope”. as a country.

organized gangs

Mitchell denied that criminals were flouting the government’s promised repression.

“I don’t think they’re disparaging our policies at all.”

Instead, there has been a big improvement in the way violent organized gangs are policed, he said.

“In the last six months, we have not seen them take over provincial towns or take over public roads or abuse or intimidate the public en masse. The police have been very effective in putting more resources into that, for the first time. “We have seen the use of Eagle monitoring those convoys,” Mitchell said.

He said the government was “fully committed” to giving more powers to the police.

Mitchell said there was a big improvement in the way violent organized gangs were controlled.