Safe shopping

Policing ‘The Palms’

The Palms shopping mall in northern Christchurch feels safe. It’s well-lit, clean and has a confident bustle. There’s no graffiti, no gang colours or patches, no hoodies over heads and no aimless loiterers.

This is Constable Keith Payne’s ‘patch’.

For the past 2 years, Keith has been the community constable for the mall, strategically situated at the junction of Burwood, Shirley and New Brighton suburbs, over the road from two schools and along the street from the CYF’s care and protection facility, Te Oranga.

Keith is a familiar figure in the busy mall. He visits several times a day, three or four days a week, monitoring potential trouble spots and chatting with retailers and shoppers.

He works closely with mall management security staff following up, where requested, any suspicious activity captured on the mall’s CCTV cameras and developing solutions to identified problems.


Across New Zealand, malls are fast becoming the social centre of a community.

They also attract crime, mainly committed by young criminals. At The Palms, 90 percent of offenders are under 17 years of age.

While tagging, disorder, dishonesty and some sale of liquor issues predominate in and around the mall, it’s more the opportunity that these ‘signal’ crimes offer that’s of value to Police.

“The mall is a way in to the community – it’s quite amazing,” says Keith.

“Tackling low-level offending at the mall is often the tip of the iceberg in terms of other issues.

“You deal with the immediate situation but it also leads you into what is happening in the family, the community….Police are juts one link in the chain.”

For example, one young shoplifter hanging around the mall was truanting from a local school. The offending was symptomatic of a deeper problem and Police were able to initiate a ‘Strengthening Families’ meeting, involving the family, a truancy officer, a representative from the offender’s school, Youth Aid, a youth worker and the Ministry of Education as well as Police.

Another recent issue was with a young Iraqi refugee, whose disorderly behaviour suggested more complex issues, including difficulty adapting to his new country. Again, in his role as community constable Keith was able to bring in the combined resources of immigration, youth workers and CYF to help.

Both cases are long-term, problem-solving processes.

“I like this type of policing. Its grassroots, localised policing at the community level. It involves a wide range of community groups which are able to swing into action once a problem is identified and we can see some sort of improvement.

“The job involves taking little chunks, little bites – issues don’t resolve overnight.”

Since Keith started at the mall – part of a larger Canterbury district pilot project and a national refreshed approach to community policing – he’s noticed a big reduction in tagging and disorder.

“We’ve been able to nip offending in the bud early – offending which has been shown to become more serious if left unchecked” he says.

“When I first started there was a lot of tagging – now there are only isolated outbreaks. We make it abundantly clear that offenders are not welcome at the mall, and the trespassers are sent off immediately.”

The immediate results are easily apparent.

Arguably more beneficial are the anticipated positive, long-term effects this type of policing has on a community, where success is measured by the responsibility a community takes for the problems on its doorstep; by the improvement in the flow of information and by a reduction in fear of crime.

Preliminary evaluation from Police analysis of this project is due out in July.

Canterbury District Commander, Superintendent Dave Cliff, says Police are increasingly understanding that dealing quickly and firmly with what may seem relatively minor matters is the best way of preventing things from developing over time into major crime problems.

“We know our communities want us to be very visible and approachable” says Dave.

“By addressing these signal crimes in a problem-solving approach, we simply make people feel safer. The work Keith is doing is an outstanding example of that approach in action.

“Our district management team has committed to significantly increasing the visibility of our policing and this is to be a major part of the Canterbury focus for the coming year.”

Superintendent Bill Searle, National Manager Community Policing, says the approach adopted by Canterbury Police in The Palms shopping mall demonstrates the benefits of a community policing approach on crime, road trauma and perceptions of safety in a localised community.