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When the boss comes out of the office and barks “you need to write 480 words about community policing for The Matters and they need it by the 15th”, there’s an accompanying feeling of unease. I’m no wordsmith. My writing style is very much ‘just the facts please’.

The chances of entertaining or engaging the reader with content that has the artistic flair of the average shopping list is remote indeed. If you’ve made it this far ..



. congratulations! And you’re right. This opening paragraph is clearly a filler, has nothing to do with the subject and has only been used to reduce the word count by 109 words.

The main issue with writing anything about policing, or police work, or crime is that people are continually bombarded with exactly those topics. I’ve just picked up today’s Herald, (sorry to mention a rival publication, Matters) and the front page is given over to the just unveiled police response to the ‘gang issue’, pages six and seven consist entirely of disturbing accounts of various criminal acts, and scattered throughout the balance of the newspaper are other related articles of lesser significance. Good news, at least on police-related topics, seems hard to find.

In point of fact, certainly at a local level, there is plenty to be happy about. The Warkworth policing area, which includes all the satellite towns like Snells Beach, Pūhoi, Kaipara Flats Matakana, Omaha and Leigh, consistently has one of the lowest rates for volume crime in Waitemat.

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