Labour is fudging the numbers when it claims to have added 1,800 Police officers, with about 15 per cent of that number having no powers to arrest or role on New Zealand’s streets, National’s Police spokesperson Mark Mitchell says.

“In 2018, Labour promised it would recruit 1,800 additional Police, which ministers repeatedly said would be made up entirely of sworn uniformed officers out on the beat.

“New revelations in the New Zealand Herald today show that 270 of the officers Labour used to claim it hit the target are not sworn officers, but authorised officers.

“While authorised officers have an important role, they are not sworn frontline officers. They do not have the training or the powers of arrest of a Police Officer. They cannot be deployed or respond to a call for help.

"Further, 50 of those 270 authorised officers appeared on the muster in May this year, the month before the Government said it had met its target of 1,800 additional sworn uniformed officers.

“Questions remain as to how 20 per cent of the authorised officers miraculously appeared on the muster the month before the celebration, enabling the Government to scrape past the target by just two officers, two years after it initially claimed it would reach the target.

“This reeks of a Government under immense pressure because it is soft on crime and has overseen startling rises in retail crime, violent crime, and gang numbers.

“Police Minister Ginny Andersen has repeatedly claimed New Zealanders feel safer because the Government has delivered 1,800 new frontline Police. It appears this claim is based on a falsehood.

“Unlike Labour, National will crack down on offenders and restore law and order in New Zealand. We’ll restore fiscal discipline and fix the economy, so we can afford the resources frontline Police need to keep Kiwis safe.”

A National government will:

• Ban gang patches, which have been the recent fuel for the worst gun violence seen in New Zealand.
• Give police non-association powers to prevent gang members from communicating and planning criminal activity.
• Allow police to issue dispersal notices where gang members come together in public to intimidate, threaten, and sometimes assault members of the public.
• Give police the warrantless search powers they need to take the guns out of the hands of violent armed gang members.
• National will also crack down on serious youth offenders by creating young offender military academies.

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