Littering and public safety

May 15th, 2008

A month ago, while in Sydney for my law firm, I spent the last few hours before coming back at the Red Bull Flugtag. People competed to see how far they could fly from a 10m ramp before hitting Sydney harbour. There were prizes for the quality of ritual pre-flight dance, and novelty of aircraft. The sun shone, the idiots plunged delightfully into the tide, the masses laughed and cheered.

Then they drifted off LARGELY TAKING THEIR LITTER WITH THEM. I was stunned at the crowd’s civility, given the amount of alcohol being washed down with Red Bull. Perhaps it was out of respect for the Botanic Gardens but if that is normal Aussie crowd behaviour I am more than ever determined that things have got to change here.

I ride and walk in the Town Belt reserve near my home. Every morning there is the rubbish of picnickers or bottle breakers from the previous evening. In Dunedin last weekend the morning after at my son’s graduation the beautiful St Clair beachfront promenade was littered with broken glass.

Why? Why have we come to accept it as normal for enough people to care nothing for community property, to make public places now a constant reminder of the prevalence of crime? Why do we tolerate a state where they can toss bottles out of their cars and still have self respect, still feel accepted?

Our ‘community’ is now fearfully busy pretending to care about our “built environment” by interfering with our neighbours. RMA consent processes encourage us to complain about more than just bulk and proposd uses of the next door (or even far-away) property. We can effectively dictate design choices like roof colour or window size. Meanwhile public places are trashed every night. Cindy Kiro wants us to embrace the unsought idiocy and vandalism called ‘graffiti’, while our poor and the next generation are being priced out of owning houses by escalating building costs, in large part the result of local authority use controls, consent costs and new laws dictating architecture details.

If we could regain even Sydney standards of civility we’d be doing much more for the quality of city life. Yes I know Bondi and other beaches get littered with dangerous trash. I hope it is not because there are lots of us there too?

Wellington Police have been using the WCC liquor ban by-law as a general purpose tool to crack down on potentially dangerous people in the central city. It could be well overdue for them to start enforcing anti-littering laws to send a similar message. That’s the essence of the ‘broken windows’ approcah to policing.

Last week I mentioned the adoption of a “broken windows” policy by Christchurch Police. When I meet Wellington’s Acting Area Commander Kevin Riordan, and Emergency Response Manager Simon Perry next week I’ll want to know if they think they need more such tools, or if there are some they’re not using, why not?

Filed under Criminal Justice, Wellington Central, Youth offending

Comments

Stephen,
If we want to Police a ‘broken windows’ policy, [as in New York about ten years ago], we actually need a Police presence.

There are few Police in Christchurch Stephen.

Its all bullshit between Police and glamour Mayor, there are just a few Police dudes on home call, after 12am, and thats it.

I am sure you will tell your Colleagues , that to get things done we actually need some Police numbers.
Thats how it works.
This broken window policeman moron down here in ChCh wants to shift to Auckland.
And our Mayor wants …
peterquixote.

Well done sir. The glass and other debris in central Mosgiel on a weekend morning is a disgrace. If all of the effort and cost of enforcing the RMA was invested in, say, potato-starch based packaging or enforcing a curfew, the streets would be safer for Mrs Struthers and I.

It might help if bottles carried at least a 20cent refund value, probably 50 cents would work better.

One way to have some control over grafitti is to accept that it is a legitimate form of expression and cater for it. To me some of it is quite fascinating and worth while … but it needs to be placed where it can be appreciated and doesn’t infringe on private property.

I also recently returned from a Sydney trip. In stark contrast, the graffiti-ed walls of Christchurch awaited. These demented scrabblings of a sub-culture are NOT a legitimate form of expression. They are a form of vandalism, a criminal activity. They are an indication of two things; firstly the lack of police courage to impose their will and the law, secondly a demented youth sector.
The wide and flat streets of Hornby are slicked with rubber marks from tire burnouts from the nightly frolicking of boy racers. If police find it too difficult to catch a youth with a spray can, perhaps they can start with something easier to spot, like the boy racers.

The smug sense of superiority of ‘George’ is typical of what is wrong with our society and has been for at least the past fifty plus year since I was a young man. The answer to all our problems is the stupid redneck approach of use the hammer .. which solves nothing and usually makes things worse.

In both the examples that ‘George’ mentions the simple if expensive solution is to provide the venue. Then it is legitimate to use the hammer on those who engage in the activites in the wrong place.

They must have some of these venues in Singapore. It must work, there’s no graffiti there either.

The current liquor ban by-law, in Wellington. The by-law needs to allow for the variety of reasons that one might be carrying alcohol in the Courtenay Place area, including travel from the local supermarket to a local BYO. The fact that law enforcement might have ‘common sense’ and ‘discretion’ to allow for this is no comfort for those who look a certain way.

Stephen,
(1) you’re astroturfing
(2) you are oversimplifying the issue – a standard part of wedge campaigning
(3) you are providing no evidence to support what you say (clue: hyperlinks are useful)

There is an expression “what we tolerate, we teach” By tolerating littering, graffiti and other anti social behaviour we are not only failing the law abiding citizens whose lives are blighted but we are creating an exponentially increasing problem that will be all the harder to deal with when we finally confront it.