A community motivated to find solutions to their ongoing crime problem packed the Te Kūiti netball clubrooms last Wednesday evening. Photo Paul Charman
Te Kūiti residents love their town, but many who spoke at a community meeting last week don’t feel safe living in it.
A group of about 200 people filled Te Kūiti’s netball clubrooms last Wednesday night to discuss their concerns about crime in town, as the first step towards finding a solution.
Common concerns were youth offending, police response to reported incidents and the community’s growing methamphetamine problem.
One woman shared how she was having trouble sleeping at night. She had only recently moved home after spending two years away from Te Kūiti.
“When I was living here, I felt better living amongst the mob than where I’m living now,” she said.
“I can’t sleep. It’s not a very nice feeling to be like that in your hometown that you love.”
She thought an increased police presence in general, but particularly on back streets like Taupiri St, would help.
Another contributor said she didn’t have any confidence in police.
She said she had a trespass order against a woman, who then breached that order nine times – three of those were with a weapon.
“She has turned up at my house with a butcher’s knife, scissors. That’s not good enough. And that’s in broad daylight.”
Police didn’t show up and didn’t follow through, she said.
“How can I have confidence that you’re going to be there?
“We could easily deal with it ourselves as a family, but I’m trying to teach my kids to do the right thing, to ring the police.”
A local business owner said she had taken to keeping a weapon behind her counter to keep herself safe, after having a knife pulled on her.
“I’m lucky to be alive and yet that woman has never been charged or even found out who she is. It has just been one excuse after another and it took quite some time to get over,” she said.
People committing crimes in town needed to know there would be consequences to their actions, she thought.
“Because if you grow up not having any consequences, you’ll just keep doing it.”
Another woman shared how a group of children aged 12 and younger, who were responsible for a spate of break-ins at a local childcare centre, were taught their actions had consequences.
They scrubbed, they cleaned and they raked bark until it was felt they had made up for their actions.
“The police couldn’t do anything about it because there’s no legal power for them to be able to do anything,” she said.
“But as a group of mums, we said we would take that consequence on.”
At the beginning of the meeting, people working to help respond to crime or set rangatahi on the right path shared what work was already underway.
Waitomo district mayor John Robertson said the council did not get involved in the social wellbeing of the community a lot.
“But we have got responsibilities there.”
He said the council financially supported programmes such as Mayor’s Taskforce for Jobs (about $500,000 annually), run through Number 12, and the Rangatahi Pathways programme (about $300,000) to get students engaged in employment as soon as they left school.
Also operating in the district is Aotahi Limited which delivers a range of community and economic development services.
One person to contribute some solutions said it was her belief that when tamariki Māori succeeded, everyone succeeded.
“Social media awareness for our rangatahi would be a good thing; giving them a purpose which is what Number 12 and Aotahi are doing; trades; sports; creating appropriate social situations for rangatahi.
“Perhaps Sport Waikato could be involved in that too.
“Meaningful parenting courses; teaching our Māori whānau about Māori child-rearing practices and going back to those. Teaching whānau about hauora and just learning about Māori pedagogies of child rearing.”
Community member Shannon Manawaiti said as far as he was concerned, Te Kūiti was the best community in the country.
He said it was his belief that with the right nurturing and upbringing, people didn’t commit crimes.
But slowly but surely, meth had found its way into the community.
“And P destroys families and it destroys communities.
“You see it in the papers, you see it on the news, but I refuse to believe we are living in a bad community.
“There’re only a few bad eggs that are creating all these issues.
“What we need to do is find those people and rather than persecute them, we need to help them.”
Another person who spoke suggested the support systems already in place, such as drug and alcohol counselling and parenting courses, needed to be more approachable.
“The people who need them the most, don’t want to go to them.
“We need to make it more accessible and we need to make people stop feeling like they have failed when they need these things. We don’t need it to be like that.”
And from police area commander Will Loughrin: an apology.
“The service we have provided for you is not what you expect, and I apologise for that.”
He said the 16 police staff dedicated to Ōtorohanga and Te Kūiti worked hard day-in and day-out, giving the public as much service as they could.
More meetings are expected to be called as the community makes headway towards finding and implementing solutions.
