Tuesday 11 September 2007

Police Association Welcomes Organised Crime Agency Decision

"Cabinet's decision to establish an Organised Crime Agency, will force strategic focus where there has been a leadership vacuum in the past," Police Association President Greg O'Connor said today.

"The Police Association has been calling for Police to deliver strategic nationwide leadership on organised crime for several years now. We are very pleased that Cabinet has now made the same call," Mr O'Connor said.

"We are playing catch-up with the gangs, but an Organised Crime Agency working within Police has the potential to start to turn that around."

"We do however need to be cautious about following the UK SOCA model too closely. The UK has 52 distinct territorial police forces. They need a separate, dedicated agency to give them coordinated national reach on such an important issue."

"New Zealand has one police force. We already have the nationwide law enforcement command structure and presence that the UK is trying to invent. We have to be very careful that we don't lose the advantages we have by chiselling organised crime policing off from the broader organisation."

"For organised crime policing to work best, it needs both strategic national leadership, and also integration into everyday frontline policing. That's where the intelligence and leads are generated, and that's where the surveillance occurs."

"It is also critically important that the new commitment to strategic focus be matched with sufficient resources to deliver results," Mr O'Connor said.

"Failure to resource police properly to do the job would just lead to public, political and police frustration, as we are forced to sit on the sidelines watching the gangs continue to get stronger and stronger."

"Success will be measured not only by us knocking the top off the pyramid at a national level, but also being able to get in and shut down the local chapters of organised crime."

Commenting on the decision to bring the work of the Serious Fraud Office back under the Police umbrella, Mr O'Connor said the move was a natural evolution.

"The Serious Fraud Office was a response to the public and political concerns about large-scale corporate fraud that existed at the time it was created. Times have changed."

"Serious fraud is now seen in a much broader context. It's no longer just about 'Wall Street', it's about international money laundering and terrorist financing. There is now recognition worldwide that fragmenting crime-fighting efforts and spreading resources across separate agencies does not make sense, whether for policing organised crime or fraud," Mr O'Connor said.

ENDS

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