Henderson EmilyPoliceDr EMILY HENDERSON (Deputy Chairperson of the Justice Committee): I rise as deputy chair to report on the Justice Committee's hearing regarding Vote Police Vote Serious Fraud and the appropriations for retail crime subsidy which we heard from the Minister of Police the Hon Ginny Andersen the New Zealand Police the Serious Fraud Office and had advice from the AuditorGeneral's office. In opening I note a continuing trend of significant increased funding for Police over the last three years and the levelling off of funding for Serious Fraud following two years of very significant increases. The first discussion was of police numbers and both the Ministers and the Commissioner of Police confirmed that the Government has achieved its target of increasing the number of frontline police by 1800 from 2017 staffing levels.The Police commissioner noted that some of those staff focus on organised crime working COVID operations and forensic accounting that and I quote doesn't sit naturally in a police station but which is having a direct impact on organised crime."The Minister also reported on significant increases in diversity within the police with around 40 percent more Maori 80 percent more Pasifika 60 percent more women and 157 percent more people of Asian descent serving in the police compared to 2017.Next the Police commissioner explained that their struggle to meet performance measures is due to the challenging environment following COVID which created heavy demand for urgent mental health and family violence responses which had risen and which needed to be prioritised. We asked what work is happening to ensure an interagency response to those kinds of incidents to reduce pressure on the police. The Minister highlighted Te Aorerekura's ongoing work increasing interagency cooperation in family violence and the promising results of the Government pilot of joint police and mental health experts or paramedics in mental health callouts.We heard from the Police that target time frames for processing firearms licences have increased from 30 days to 90 days because of the greater diligence required by the recommendations of the royal commission of inquiry into the terrorist attack on the Christchurch masjidain. The Police said they have cleared a large backlog and are confident they are on track.We asked also about the impact of the new nationwide firearms register. The Police acknowledged that while the vast majority of firearms offences are committed by unlicensed individuals most such firearms have come through licensed owners through burglary as much as by anything else. On the register the Police stated "helps ensure accountability". We also heard that in the last year the Police completed more safety compliance checks than ever before and under the new system they pointed out that they can prioritise checks for higher risk individuals.We asked also for an update on the nationwide roll-out of the tactical response model (TRM) which improves safety by inter alia doubling the tactical training of front-line staff from 3.5 to 7.5 days a year and introducing tactical two-person dog teams. The Police told us that the four district trial of TRM had shown increased safety for front-line police who felt safer and more assured in their decision making.We also addressed changes to the fleeing driver pursuit policy with the commissioner following the review of the December 2020 changes which while designed to reduce the level of deaths following pursuit had seen an increase in fleeing drivers. The new policy increases the criteria available in decision making for individual officers. But the commissioner emphasised and we acknowledged the difficulties of setting and operating these parameters.Finally we discussed the Government's November 2022 retail crime subsidy scheme giving small shops and dairies a subsidy to install fog cannons with a $4.5 million funding for which the Minister is responsible. The Minister reiterated that the level of retail crime is unacceptable. She reported positive feedback from those accessing the subsidy scheme.We also heard that the Police's new dedicated retail crime unit has already initiated the prosecution of 200 people for 1200 offences while the Minister told us that the involvement of a specialist unit in prosecutions has meant higher sentences on average. She refuted the suggestion that the rise in retail crime was linked to the Government's work to reduce the prison population since sentencing rates for retail crime offences have not changed and most of the reduction in prison numbers is due to reduced imprisonment for traffic and drug offences. I commend this report to the House."