Salaam and warm greetings to all our Muslim brothers and sisters in our community on this auspicious Holy month of Ramadan.
Counties Manukau Police send the Muslim Community best wishes for the upcoming Eid Festival.
We are pleased to share with their community that crime has dropped by 11% according to the 2012 calendar year crime statistics released recently. This equates to almost 5000 fewer crimes and thousands fewer victims of crime.
This is a fantastic achievement and one that our partners and community need to be extremely proud of, because without them, we could not have got this result.
Prevention First
Since the Prevention First Strategy was launched in 2011, a mind-set change has been fostered within our people, and this puts prevention and the needs of victims at the forefront of Policing.
At its heart, Policing is about preventing crime before it happens and putting victims at the centre of our thinking. Nevertheless, crime will always occur and we will always seek to apprehend and bring criminals to justice.
In Counties Manukau, we understand that by working together with our community and our stakeholders, our success will be much greater.
Mobility devices
Our officers are now more prepared than ever. By using mobility devices (i-phones and i-pads), we can look up details of an address or an offender ensuring that we are much more informed about the situation that we are going into and we know what tactics that we may use to resolve it.
Crime in Counties Manukau District has been tracking downwards over the past three years and Police are committed to ensure that this continues.
If you want to help prevent crime from happening in your community, there are a number of valuable crime prevention tools available. These include the SNAP website (www.snap.org.nz) used to record serial numbers and property; Selecta DNA, a forensic property marking tool; and Crimestoppers, an anonymous crime information line.
I wish Eid Mubarak to the Muslim Community in Counties Manukau.
Be Safe and Feel Safe
John Tims is Superintendent of Police and District Commander of Counties Manukau. A related story appears elsewhere in this Special Report