GOVERNMENT ALREADY TAKING ACTION AGAINST "ORGANISED CRIME"

The Minister of Police, Hon John Luxton today dismissed the policy Labour has produced on organised crime.

"There is absolutely nothing new in the Moore statement," said Mr Luxton.

"The Government has already stated its commitment to introducing legislative changes which will give Police extended powers to deal in a pre-emptive manner with the criminal activities of gangs. These proposed changes certainly did not originate with Labour, they heard about them from the Government at the Justice and Law Reform Select Committee.

"We will be extending the powers of the Police so that they can deal more effectively with gangs. I expect these changes to be introduced to Parliament as soon as possible to ensure that our communities are assured of the Government's commitment to crackdown on gangs," the Minister stated.

"In fact, it was due to the demands of the Opposition that those powers are not currently in place when Labour decided in 1993, that the Government's proposed legislation to extend the powers of Police were "too intrusive". They instead weakened the changes.

"The Government has also done considerable work with the implementation of our New Zealand Crime Prevention Strategy, which combined with the establishment of our Safer Community Councils effectively deals with crime prevention and the causes of crime at a grass roots level," Mr Luxton said.

"All that Labour propose is yet another layer of bureaucracy run by a "committee" of nine. The money spent on this proposal would just be yet another overhead whereas such funding is better directed at the root causes of crime which is exactly what this Government is doing.

"The process suggested by Mike Moore proposes direct oversight of organised crime investigation and strategy by Ministers of the Crown. This would threaten the constabular independence of Police and make Police subject to political interference in day to day operations," said Mr Luxton.

"Police have done, and continue to do an excellent job in combating organised crime with recent arrests for organised criminal activities and we have seen the majority of those gang members responsible for recent incidents brought before the courts.

"In the area of information sharing between Government departments, the Opposition is obviously not aware that it is already taking place, and further work is being undertaken by officials to provide Government with a proposed system to more effectively target criminals and organised crime.

"Labour obviously chooses to ignore the excellent policies of the Government, but I do expect them to support our legislative changes in Parliament and not try to weaken them," concluded Mr Luxton

Ends

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