The government seems to still be in holiday mode when in the past two weeks alone we have had six homicides, countless firearms incidents, and police needing to arm themselves against gangs almost every second day," says Sensible Sentencing Trust.

“It seems every twelve hours there is yet another report of a homicide, firearms incident, gang-related incident, police being threatened or shot at, or yet another aggravated robbery," says Darroch Ball co-leader of Sensible Sentencing Trust.

“The latest South Auckland incident where an innocent shopkeeper has been injured and hospitalised in a firearm-related aggravated robbery is just another in a long list of a crime-ridden eighteen days of January.”

“There is something clearly going wrong with law and order in our communities and it is now clear that our community’s safety is being directly affected."

“The government can no longer keep its head in the sand and pretend that the ideological pathway that it seems happy to be continuing down is anywhere near reducing crime rates or keeping our community safe."

“Arbitrarily reducing the prison population by some magic number and claiming it a success is meaningless in the face of the ballooning numbers of serious crimes, firearms incidents, gang numbers, and homicides – all the while delaying frontline police officer recruitment," says Mr Ball.

“The government needs to come off holiday and give our communities confidence that there is a plan to deal with these issues and that the safety of the community is top priority and focus.”

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