Change for the better

Enderley kids used to give the fingers and yell out “pigs” at passing Police cars. These days, they wave and call out Community Constable Mason Lepou’s name as he walks or drives down the street.

“This is a community that can stand up and take a bow for the way it has changed,” says Mason. “It used to be that only the father in a family was safe walking the streets, now everyone is safer.”

Cautiously optimistic about the area’s recent recorded 30 percent drop in crime, Mason believes problem-solving community policing is transforming Enderley.

The modus operandi sees Police working with the community, local authorities and government agencies to develop lasting solutions to community concerns. When Mason was appointed community constable to Enderley last year, the small east Hamilton suburb was the place no-one wanted to know.

Enderley is smack in the middle of two separate policing areas, with more than 50 percent unemployment. It’s also rated at the maximum level for social deprivation, has one of the highest concentrations of state housing in the country, with a high Mongrel Mob population and the worst suburban crime rate in Hamilton.

In response, Mason has put the SARA model in place Scanning, Analysing, Responding to and Assessing the problems and solutions.

Scanning

Mason’s first task in Enderley was to look and learn; for the first month he ‘drifted’ round the suburb. The second month he watched and listened to what was happening, what had happened and who was doing what.

By the third month he realised he couldn’t achieve anything by himself, so he visited people – churches, the council, government agencies – and attended community network meetings where people talked about who they were and what they did.

At one of these meetings he suggested discussing local issues, but was told it was not the right forum – so he set up his own inter-agency group.

He also organised a ‘meet the community constable’ public meeting at the local community centre.

On three consecutive days at different times, to enable as many as residents as possible to attend, he gave the same presentation – ‘Enderley’s problems’ – from a Police perspective, based on Police intelligence. He then asked people to tell him about their concerns.

Top of their list was gang activity. Followed by intimidation, drugs, tagging, government agencies, alcohol, family values, lack of Police visibility, litter and calling 111. Tellingly, he says, no-one mentioned any of the problems he high-lighted in his slideshow.

“It shows just how wrong you can get it if you don’t listen to the community,” he says.

Analysis

With the issues identified, Mason analysed the information with his inter-agency group and came up with the objective of reducing the harm of gang activity.

He describes this stage of the process as ‘peeling back the layers of the onion’ to get to the core of the issue from the general to the specific. What is the behaviour behind the problem? Where do the offenders live? Where and when are offences committed? Who does it affect? What part of the problem can we control and where will we have the most effect?

This phase included many meetings and talking with residents – parents, kids, gang members – how they felt about the gangs and recruits, the methods gangs used to recruit and so on.

Mason found fear was central to the gang activity. Gang members and ‘wannabee’ members could commit crimes as and when they wanted because people were too scared to report them.

Response

Brainstorming the information they now had, Mason and his inter-agency group came up with 10 possible responses to the issues raised by the community.

Mason then ran the list past his community group – a representative sample of Enderley residents he’d earlier handpicked as a quality control panel – to see if he was on the right track.

Together they picked two responses to focus on: establish a sports club and develop weeknight activities at the community centre. “Both had the potential to engage people, get young people off the streets, and develop a sense of community,” Mason says.

Both initiatives are thriving, and are tipped to expand. A league club organises teams from six year olds to premier grade, and evening activities are held weeknights, facilitated by a fulltime staff member paid for by Hamilton City Council.

Mason has since introduced another community initiative (already successful in Otahuhu) – ‘panel of agencies’ meetings at which residents can speak their mind about local issues to senior staff from local authorities and government agencies. The first meeting in May attracted MSD, Ministry of Education, CYFs, Hamilton City Council, Police, Tainui and Housing NZ representatives. Further meetings will be bi-monthly for ongoing community consultation.

“Having bosses there showed the community we do give a damn,” says Mason. Issues from that meeting have gone back to the community group for ‘problem-solving’.

Mason has since also extended his community residents’ group. He will report to them and explain what has and will be done to fix issues, and what can’t be fixed and why, ensuring community consultation every step of the way.

Assessment

Assessment of the SARA project is still to come.

“We’re not at this stage yet, and the key is not to jump to conclusions,” says Mason.

However, even at this early stage, results look good. Crime overall is down in Enderley, and domestic burglary figures have dropped to less than half during the second half of 2007.

More importantly, Mason can see a change of attitude in the community.

“People feel safer in the streets, people know me and greet me when I’m out and about. Visually, the community looks better. There’s less tagging and fewer problems.”

Mason is a champion of the SARA problem-solving model, one he learnt about only last year at a Responsiveness to Māori course in Wellington. He’s applied the approach ever since.

“I was sceptical but now I know it works...I have proven it to myself and to the community.”

Community Policing National Manager, Superintendent Bill Searle, says Hamilton Police have taken an intelligence-driven approach to identifying their most at-risk locations in terms of crime, road trauma and other indicators.

“They’ve appointed community constables to those areas to take a problem-solving approach, and Enderley is an example of this approach working to good effect.”

SARA problem solving

The four components of SARA are:

Scanning – identifying the problem – with the community.

Analysis – learning the problem’s causes, scope and effects.

Response – acting to alleviate the problem together.

Assessment – determining if the response worked.