10. Question No. 10—PoliceJAMI-LEE ROSS (Botany) to the Minister of PoliceQuestion No. 10—Police10. JAMI-LEE ROSS (Botany) to the Minister of Police: How many new sworn constabulary police staff have been deployed to the Counties Manukau Police District since 1 November 2017 and how many additional sworn constabulary police staff are estimated to be deployed to this district by 31 December 2020?Hon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): Thank you to the hard-working member for Botany for asking a good question re police. I know that member takes a very close interest in the wellbeing of his community. In answer to the first question 276 new police officers have been employed since—[Interruption] SPEAKER: Order! Order! Sorry. Mr Goldsmith I accept there was some extraneous material at the beginning. It was polite and unlike some I'm not going to rule it ironic. So we're just going to continue.Hon STUART NASH: To the first question 276 new officers have been deployed since 1 November 2017. Almost 20 percent of these officers are Pasifika 12 percent are Māori 11 percent are Asian and more than a quarter are women.Hon Kris Faafoi: Diverse.Hon STUART NASH: Diverse. To the second question the Commissioner of Police is responsible for staff allocation and I have been advised that their recruitment plan for the 2020-2021 year is not finalised but indications are that Counties Manukau will have up to 1167 officers by the end of 2020. This will be real growth of more than 11 percent in the number of front-line officers.Jami-Lee Ross: Will those additional police be expected to tackle the spate of local gun-related crimes where according to a Stuff article there have been nine shootings in Counties Manukau so far this year?Hon STUART NASH: Yes but in response to that specific question I had been advised that since March this year there had been 11 serious crimes of violence including six homicides in this district. The vast majority do involve firearms and police have made arrests in all but one of these crimes. Of these nine of the 11 crimes have actually been gang on gang violence whereas the other two have been family harm. Police are working with other agencies though and iwi and local groups to address organised crime in South Auckland. But we all know that police cannot fix these problems by themselves.Jami-Lee Ross: Does he agree with St John Ambulance medical director Dr Tony Smith that most firearm injuries are with handguns and it appears to us that most of them are gang-related" and if so what additional effort will be made by the Government to tackle gun crimes involving gangs in Counties Manukau?Hon STUART NASH: Thank you very much. I'm not too sure about whether it's handguns or not but what I can tell you is that the Government takes gun crime and gangs very seriously. That's why we put out a discussion document around firearm prohibition orders. Submissions close at the beginning of January and I look forward to seeing the feedback from the community on this.Hon Judith Collins: Of the sworn police staff in Counties Manukau deployed since 1 November 2017 can he advise the House how many police officers have since left the New Zealand Police from the total of all police officers deployed in Counties Manukau?Hon STUART NASH: No; I haven't got that number at hand but what I can say is that in total the number of new police officers that we have graduated since we came into Government is 1765. We're about to meet the coalition agreement of 1800 new officers on 21 November this year."