World stage next for Safe Summer Coromandel project

A project born after 13 people died on the Coromandel over the summer of 2010-11 has just won the Best Partnership category and took out the overall Best Problem Solving Project at the New Zealand finals of the Problem Orientated Policing Awards.

The next step is the international stage with the national award-winners off to Australia.

The Safe Summer Coromandel presentation documented the multi-partner project's success toward its goals of saving lives and stopping people getting hurt in the Coromandel over summer.

The judges liked the fact that this was a community partnership and that the project team has been evaluating the results every year for the last four years to find out what works and what doesn't.

The presentation began by giving judges a taste of the Coromandel over summer with excerpts of Destination Coromandel's GoPro the Coromandel series, and also showed a clip from a 3News story on the award-winning bar crossings videos produced by Waikato Regional Council.

The presentation and videos were produced by our TCDC Communications team.

Watch the intro video here.

Watch the 3News story here.

Presented by Safe Summer Coromandel Chair, Senior Sergeant Graham Shields and Strategic Leadership Group member Rachel Harrison, the story focussed on Senior Sergeant Shields' personal Coromandel New Year's Eve experience of his first summer in charge of the Coromandel Police.

On that night in December 2010, 240 people were treated by St John for alcohol and drug related issues. Five of those were flown to hospital by rescue helicopter, 40 people were arrested, and by5:00am Senior Sergeant Shields was in the back of an ambulance holding a towel against a hole in the neck of a 23-year-old man who had been stabbed after trying to stop a domestic assault on the beach in Whitianga.

By the end of January 2011, 13 people had been killed on the Coromandel in the peak period.

"Towns like Whangamata and Whitianga attract more summer holiday-makers than anywhere else in New Zealand," he says. "For example, the Coromandel Peninsula sold a million nights of accommodation in the summer of 2013. But people let their guard down when they're on holiday. The problem was unique. Nowhere else had that kind of holiday death toll."

"I thought to myself," Shields recalls of that 2010 New Year's Eve, "'next year there are going to be some changes because this can't be allowed to continue'."

With many agencies teaming up to work on the problem under the Safe Summer Coromandel banner, the results have been nothing less than spectacular, and the results have now been recognised by this award.

We'd like to acknowledge the involvement of all from the community who really care about the Coromandel and the expert help from the following partner groups:

• Police

• Thames-Coromandel District Council

• CAPS Hauraki

• ACC

• Health Promotion Agency

• Waikato DHB

• Community Mental Health

• Surf Lifesaving NZ

• Waikato Regional Council

• Maritime NZ

• Coast Guard

• NZ Fire Service

• NZ Rural Fire Service

• St John

• Land SAR NZ

• Hauraki Herald

ends

© Scoop Media