Father-Daughter Teams @ Wellington South Community Patrol

Since it formed four years ago, the Wellington South Community Patrol (WSCP) has attracted three father-daughter teams as patrollers. In that time our vigilance has led to several traffic-related convictions, returned a stolen car to a grateful owner, delivered several at-risk people to safety, reported hundreds of liquor-ban breaches, and enabled thousands of residents to feel just a little bit safer.

The founding father-daughter team was Rebecca and Keith Powell (of Nice Place Property Management, recently set up in Newtown). They were followed by Catherine Law joining her father Tom Law, and more recently Tanya and Robin Stone. All patrollers work in teams of two or more, in a safely locked car, and in close communication with the NZ Police. We now have 20 members and held our fourth annual meeting last night.

Robin Stone says “working with family is great because we know each other so well that we operate as one, complimenting each other’s skills”. Robin and Tanya are also Police Volunteers monitoring CCTV cameras in the central city, and find it very valuable to see things from both sides of the lens.

In 2014 we travelled 7001 km, and patrollers put in 946 hours on the road (these are statistics we supply to our parent body Community Patrols of NZ). In that time we reported 866 instances of disorder (mostly liquor-ban breaches), 141 vehicle-related incidents, 84 people or special service, and 58 cases of lost, damaged or insecurity property.

In our first four years WSCP has mounted over 426 patrols, driving over 24,500 km. We have spent 1591 hours on the road (that is 11.7 weeks). We have reported 3936 breaches of the liquor ban, 1791 cases of disorder and 627 vehicles of interest.

WSCP urges everyone to keep their home and vehicles locked at all times, and their valuable out of sight. Wellington South Community Patrol covers Mt Cook, Brooklyn, Newtown, Island Bay, Owhiro Bay and the hill suburbs alongside them.

The patrol is very generously sponsored by New World Newtown, McDonalds Newtown and Caltex Basin Reserve, Newtown Workshop (Gordon Place) and AMP Insurance.

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