Mark Mitchell and Ginny Andersen. Photo: RNZ / VNP
The government is hailing a 22 percent drop in serious assaults in the Auckland CBD compared with last year.
But the Labour Party says the closure of two emergency housing places has forced people with complex issues into the suburbs, where crime rates have not fallen.
And the leader of the ministerial advisory group on crime says more work is needed to address the problem.
Police Minister Mark Mitchell credited the drop in serious assaults in the CBD to police working more closely with community stakeholders.
"We've brought everyone together, all the major stakeholders who are all doing their own thing and trying to working hard to try and make the Auckland CBD safer," he told Morning Report.
"For example, we brought the government agencies here - [Kāinga Ora], [the Ministry for Social Development], police, we brought residents, ratepayers and businesses associations, social service providers, Māori wardens… We meet once a month. We've got a joined-up strategy.
"Obviously there's been new beat constables put on the street in Auckland, CBD. There's been a very, very good response there. And although there's a lot more work to do, we're starting to see some good early results from that joined-up approach."
The statistics showing a 22 percent drop in the CBD come from 1 January to the end of July, compared to the same period last year. The same numbers however show a 7 percent rise across the entire city.
Mitchell denied cherry-picking the numbers.
"Auckland Council have released stats saying there's been a 35 percent decrease in crime overall, and Heart of the City - the biggest business association - has released these stats to say there's been a 50 percent reduction in retail crime.
"Those are good stats, they're definitely worth recognising. They indicate that we're heading in the right direction, but we know we've got a lot more work to do."
A spike in homicides in the city was "awful", he said, but did not "involve the wider public".
"They're normally domestic-related homicides, which are terrible - and we're obviously working hard on trying to get family violence down - or they're contained within gang members themselves."
Labour police spokesperson Ginny Andersen did not dispute the promising figures up to the end of July, except to say they had not yet been made public.
"But if you compare the first six months of this year to July 1 to the first six months of last year, both serious assaults and retail type offending … are both up across Auckland as a whole."
Publicly available data on the police.data.nz website to the end of July showed assaults in the Auckland region were up 8 percent. Overall crime was up 3 percent, with rises in assault, sexual assault and theft offset by drops in abductions, robberies and burglaries (none of the figures have been adjusted to reflect changes in population).
Andersen said the new approach in the CBD was working, taking some credit for it, but that that success was at the expense of other parts of Auckland.
I've been in there recently and walked around with police. We started off work that set up free safety hubs that had community patrols, as well as some of the security guards who work in retail are working together, and that work has continued and bedded in, and that's a positive change for the central city of Auckland.
"But what we are saying is just pushing people out of emergency housing and shifting issues doesn't fix that problem."
She said as far as Labour could tell, no one knew where people shifted out of the city centre had gone.
"I've been in there and walked around with police over the last two weeks, and it is policing themselves in the high traffic areas where there's lots of people so there is increased visibility, and that's showing to be a positive thing, and it's good to see that for our biggest city.
"The point we make though is that a lot of the issues that have been in the central city have been shifted. They've shut down… emergency housing, and they've reduced the number of people getting emergency housing…
"Additional staff for the CBD have come from neighbouring districts. So they've taken those police out of Counties Manukau and out of the North Shore to come into the CBD."
Mitchell denied shifting the problem, saying there had been an "increase in big presence and police presence in all parts of Auckland, and the stats are moving in the right direction for us… it's a good news story for us, but like I said, we've got a lot more work to do".
Sunny Kaushal, chair of both the government's new retail crime advisory group and the Dairy & Business Owners Group, said the latest stats were positive - but he urged businesses to keep pressuring the government to do more.
Kaushal said many business owners and workers were still living in fear that they could be targeted by criminals.
"We all need to keep on putting pressure on the government of the day - whosoever, irrespective of the party politics - because we deserve every Kiwi deserve to be safer and we should be the safest country in the world."
