Ryan Bridge: The new Auckland police station won't magically solve all of our problems

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

Don't get me wrong, a new police station in central Auckland is good news, as were recent stats showing crime in the city is way down, but where are all the wackos and the nut jobs going to go next?

That's my question.

You know the ones I'm talking about – they strut around holding their pants up with one hand, a menacing look in their eye, shouting and ranting and raving and lunging at people.

They're pissing in the middle of the street during the day or fighting each other.

Once the city is secured, where do these people go next?

Parnell, Ponsonby, on a bus to Westfield New Market?

If the idea is to make a city feel safer for people, then more cops will help do that.

What they won't do is make these intimidating people disappear altogether like some Houdini act.

One of the biggest problems we have is a lack of community drug and alcohol rehab centers in this country, affordable or free ones.

And our corrections system doesn't correct people – last year it spent $400 million of our money on rehab programs. Guess how much they reduced reoffending by: less than 2% on most programs.

So, yes, we should celebrate the fact that we're getting more cop shops, gang patch bans, and supposedly harsher sentences for violence because the last lot went a bit soft on that.

But we shouldn't kid ourselves that it'll magically solve all of our problems or those of the whack jobs on Queen Street.

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