During New Zealand First coalition negotiations our policy was to train and resource 1800 new frontline police. We secured this coalition policy win to ensure our streets had a police force that could tackle crime – after years of neglect.
Remember those previous nine years of neglect saw a ‘tag and release’ policy implemented under the previous government – but Labour have now just doubled down and don’t even want to ‘tag’ them.
No other Party, including Labour, came close to our ambition of delivering that number of frontline police for our communities.
We now need to sort out our court system. No more ‘catch and release’. There is no point increasing police numbers if violent criminals are not kept off our streets and out of our communities.
Laws need to be introduced that ensure criminals are caught and properly held to account – it certainly won’t be home detention sitting in their backsides.
