Welcome to 2023, everyone, hope your Christmas/New Year break went well and you manage better on the New Year resolutions than I have. Yep, I made some. Same ones as last year. They obviously failed – to cut down on coffee during shifts (yeah, right), doubled down on day two: fail. Bring a salad to work to eat in the car between jobs. Nope. Failed again. The next shift found the uneaten salad in the boot. At least I tried.

If you worked through, like I did, we deserve some improved weather for our time off (unless you’re in the south). What’s with Cromwell having 30+ degree days while the extremities of the North Island drowned? To all you rural cops working day in and day out for your communities, making sure your townsfolk are safe, you rock! I hope your bosses give you a chance to have some time off.

I see the pressure on Police to deliver on its road policing responsibilities has led to an “Open Roads” initiative where road policing staff must be deployed only to highways. I get this at one level, but who does it leave to attend the collisions in town? All well and good to say the I-cars can attend but when you have an iNet queue of family harm, mental distress and burglaries (a crime that does considerable harm to victims) waiting to be assigned, is this the best use of those I-cars?

It really demonstrates the same old problem: there are simply not enough frontline response staff to meet demand while also delivering on Police’s contract obligations to road policing. It seems obvious that, despite the increase in police numbers over the past few years, demand has outgrown supply already and too many are working away from the frontline. No wonder dispatchers across the country are, figuratively, pulling their hair out trying to find units to attend jobs.

Prediction for 2023 – ringfencing of “certain funding” and a black and white traffic car coming to a police station near you.

We all know the summer holiday season is slim pickings on the news front – especially so for the NZ Herald it seems, running a “story” listing all the convictions cops have had in the past 10 years or so. What was the point of the story? While you, me and 99.99% of the rest of us work our butts off for our country and always try to do the best we can with what’s in front of us, any time of the day or night, reading that made my blood boil!

This column is written by a frontline police member. It does not represent views or policies of the Police Association.