The thinner blue line

Written By: - Date published: 11:16 am, May 21st, 2012 - 19 comments
Categories: budget2012, defence, police - Tags:

National is going to cut 125 police staff. They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course. Course, tying up cops with paperwork will help the crime stats drop. And with the navy so underfunded half its inshore patrol vessels are being mothballed I bet illegal fishing instances drop too. Funny that.

19 comments on “The thinner blue line ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Akldnut 1
    21 May 2012 at 11:22 am

    Looks like it’s time to rob a bank then go fishing, I’ll never get caught!

  2. Bill 2
    21 May 2012 at 11:28 am

    “They’re not sworn officers but who’s going to pick up the work they were doing? Sworn cops, of course.’

    Probably not. Much more likely to be a private contractor. (If not straight away then pretty soon, on down the line.)

    • Draco T Bastard 2.1
      21 May 2012 at 4:01 pm

      And at two or three times the price. Private contractors do really well with government guaranteed income.

  3. tc 3
    21 May 2012 at 11:49 am

    Yes we’re not making ‘frontline’ cuts just the lines behind it that prop up the frontline and allow it to do the job.

    Another BS slogan that’s been allowed to go unchallenged by the MSM, you whip out the backoffice admin etc and the frontline fails to function as effectively as it’s not being supported.

  4. Lanthanide 4
    21 May 2012 at 12:03 pm

    Apparently 75 of these positions are already vacant.

    • ghostwhowalksnz 4.1
      21 May 2012 at 1:47 pm

      The squeeze has been on for a while and they were told not fill any vacancies.

      Often non sworn police are retired officers with decades of knowledge but no wish to go back to shift work or front line duties. They provide some continuity in areas where younger police are rotated quickly around different jobs

    • Deano 4.2
      21 May 2012 at 1:54 pm

      In the normal course of events, there will always be some vacancies.

      So, there are, say, 4,000 non-sworn police jobs of which 75 (2%) are vacant this instant – so there are 3,925 non-sworn cops.

      National disestablishes all 75 vacant jobs plus another 50. How many non-sworn cops are you left with? Not 3,875.

      Because unfilled vacancies will soon appear in the remaining jobs too and would quickly return to that level of 2% (for example) that we have now. The actual number of non sworn staff will fall by 125, more or less.

  5. captain hook 5
    21 May 2012 at 12:04 pm

    I hear soimebody on the radio yesterday saying that there is to be a new pilot programme on crashes at school bus stops.
    WTF?
    A few cop cars aaround schools at 3-3.30 would fix it up in no time without some ad agency and policy analysts dreaming up ways to waste money and push any decision two years into the future.
    The country is on the wonk.
    you better believe it.

  6. a friendly fellow 6
    21 May 2012 at 12:24 pm

    And why were 75 positions vacant? Because they knew job cuts were coming and instituted a hiring freeze a while back. also a bunch of positions were restructured last year without any publicity. crusher has a lot to answer for

    • tc 6.1
      21 May 2012 at 2:26 pm

      ” crusher has a lot to answer for…” and will not be brought to account for any of it, like Shonkey, Blinglish, Findlayson, Joyce, Ryall, AyaTolley etc etc

  7. ghostwhowalksnz 7
    21 May 2012 at 1:52 pm

    In the UK they are going further
    The Lincolnshire Police Authority is about to sign a contract worth more than £200 million to outsource a large range of operational and business services, including ICT, to G4S.
    The contract is believed to be the widest in its scope awarded by a UK police authority.

    Private prisons, private police operations……

    • David H 7.1
      21 May 2012 at 8:50 pm

      Private Police, private armies, large corporations, Hmmm seems like the movies are trying to come true.

  8. joe90 8
    21 May 2012 at 1:56 pm

    Word on non-sworn staff new conditions is 2 shifts covering 7-11 with 7 on 2 off.

  9. Sam Hall 9
    21 May 2012 at 2:22 pm

    Word!

  10. Sam Hall 10
    21 May 2012 at 2:23 pm

    Xcuse moi. What does wysiwyg cause to occur pls?

  11. Crashcart 11
    21 May 2012 at 7:11 pm

    The line about half the inshore patrol fleet is spin I’m afraid. One of the ANZAC frigates has effectively ben out due to lack of manning for the last 6 months. They have disguised it by saying it is in maintenance but that was due to finish last year. they realised they didn’t have even a third of the people needed to send it to sea safely. They intend on stripping the other frigate of personnel to get it to sea in a few months for sea trials then it will be straight along side again due to no manning. this also excludes an off shore patrol vessel due to go along side due to no manning in the next couple of months.

    The navy is in a bad way.

  13. Robert 13
    27 May 2012 at 7:31 pm

    This is a PC way of culling staff. Each police district must now have a centralized file management centre. These file management centres will be located near the district headquarters. This is a good idea in itself but as new staff may not be employed at present it must be staffed from existing members. All good if your District is Auckland city or Wellington as the staff affected can travel? Not so good if your District is provincial as the travel distances are so much greater. So you review all non sworn positions under the guise of a district review. Those members affected will be offered positions at the new file management centre but for various reasons most of the staff affected will not be able to take up these positions and will be offered redundancy. These jobs will then be advertised nationally with the same result which will allow the administration to hire locally. Loyalty accounts for nothing. Most of the members affected have years more service than the average cop on the beat and will probably have slim opportunities for reemployment. Why is it that the non sworn have to carry the can. Why don’t they have a look at Police National Headquarters. Most of the sworn positions there could be undertaken by civilians at a much cheaper rate. Any rank above Sergeant could be undertaken by a civilian for that matter. The majority are administration roles. That would put more bobbies on the beat. But most of them have not been on the beat for many years.
    They also say that there are 75 unfilled non sworn jobs. Who do you think has been carrying the workload of these vacancies and they wont to get rid of these people.

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.