The unsafe capital

Stuff reports:

A $7.7 million initiative to make Wellington’s central city safer appears to be failing to curb crime.

Two men were shot and critically injured opposite Te Aro Park on Dixon St in the early hours of Saturday. It sparked a retaliatory shooting at an occupied home in Tawa – part of ongoing gang tensions between the Mongrel Mob and the King Cobras.

Te Aro Park attracted so much crime it was one of the locations that inspired the Wellington City Council, police, and other agencies to in 2021 launch the Pōneke Promise – an initiative to improve safety through measures such as lighting, laneway improvements and a new community hub.

Police and the council were asked for any evidence the promise was working. Data from the police website for central Wellington between March 2021 and March 2022 – and the same period one year earlier – shows a small drop in assaults, robberies and burglaries, but small increases in sexual assaults and thefts.

So $8 million spend and no decrease in crime.

Wellington City councillor Diane Calvert said the promise had failed and people were avoiding the area.

The proliferation of emergency housing in the area was part of the issue and the Pōneke Promise was just putting a plaster on the problem, she said.

“People currently don’t feel safe to walk, shop and visit, let alone cycle.”

It is impossible to ignore the impact of the emergency housing in the CBD.

Councillor Jill Day said the council working with other agencies could only strengthen the response to the “very serious issue” of safety in the city.

“This sort of change takes time, but I am confident that the Pōneke Promise is focused on delivering the change that is needed to make the central city safer.”

But councillor Tamatha Paul said the promise needed more resourcing. Health-based, compassionate responses were always worth the investment, she said.

So Cr Calvert accurately points put the problem, while Cr Day gives platitudes and Cr Paul thinks we need to spend more on being compassionate to gang members.

Councillor Fleur Fitzsimons agreed: “The language of blame and failure will not solve these problems. The solution lies in improving education, ending poverty and the work of the Pōneke Promise.”

Cr Fitzsimons also goes for platitudes and blames it all on poverty. By this logic poverty must have skyrocketed since 2017, as crime in the CBD has.

Councillor Sean Rush said the agencies involved “can only do so much” and described the safety issues as “a failure of government policy”.

“Housing gangs in the CBD does not fix homelessness. We have to deal with government policy that invites them into the very heart of where our most at risk young people are.”

Cr Rush correctly works out the problem.