Crime on the march in central city despite safety promise

Thursday, 2 May 2024

Courtenay Place on a recent Thursday night. Crowds are down. Crime isn’t.

In a downtown pockmarked with closed-for-business signs and shuttered buildings, one thing is on the rise – crime.

It’s now higher than before the Covid pandemic and since a $7.7 million central city safety promise that started three years ago.

Existing police data already showed acts intended to cause injury were up in 2023 compared to 2021, as was robbery, unlawful entry, and theft in Wellington’s central city.

But police data now released under the Official Information Act goes back to 2019, before Covid-19 wrought changes on downtown, and shows the same types of crime are up compared to 2019, while the numbers of sexual assaults and related offences went from 69 to 61.

It comes as hospitality businesses struggle with fewer punters coming to the city amid a cost of living crisis and changing habits, retailers closing, and a large numbers of downtown buildings facing quake-strengthening issues.

Total “reported victimisations” in an area roughly extending to Kent Tce, Karo Drive and the Wellington Railway Station increased from 3567 in 2019 to 4021 in 2023.

Mayor Tory Whanau: ‘Pōneke Promise has helped introduce some good changes but it’s clear that more needs to be done to make our city safer and friendlier.’

In May, 2021, the $7.7m Pōneke Promise was launched. It was led by the city council but also included police, hospitality, retail, regional council, social services, local iwi and others. It started from young women feeling unsafe in the city but grew to be about making the city “feel safe, vibrant and welcoming for everyone”.

Mayor Tory Whanau said the council had been working on safety initiatives since the Pōneke Promise but it was time to update them. She was working with Downtown Community Ministry and leaders from regional and central government on this.

“Pōneke Promise has helped introduce some good changes but it’s clear that more needs to be done to make our city safer and friendlier.”

Finance Minister Nicola Willis has repeated her 2021 statement saying she wouldn’t walk in central Wellington by herself at night.

Pukehīnau/Lambton ward councillor Geordie Rogers said council work was making a “massive difference compared to where we would have been”. But there was still work to do.

Fellow ward councillor Iona Pannett said the problems in the city were too complex to be solved by just one initiative. But she pointed out that rising crime statistics could also reflect more people reporting crime.

In 2021, then-opposition Wellington MP Nicola Willis said she no longer felt safe walking in the central city. Now in government and Finance Minister, she was on Wednesday asked if she now felt safe.

“I haven’t walked through Wellington at night by myself for many years. Like a lot of people I prefer to be with others,” she said.

Police Minister Mark Mitchell lay the problem of rising crime on the last government.

“I want to see an increased presence of officers on the beat in our CBDs. To support this, the coalition government is creating a framework for other agencies, who have the skills, to take responsibility for these demands and allow police to refocus their efforts on matters of core policing.”

The Government also had a target to reduce crimes and recruit 500 more police.