Our progress on city safety
The Pōneke Promise has an ambitious goal. We want Pōneke Wellington to be a city free of anti-social behavior and violence.
I remember attending the rally organized by the Wellington Alliance Against Sexual Violence back in 2021 when I was still a student. It was clear to me that our way of responding to violence in Pōneke hadn’t been working. People spoke of their experiences working in bars, feeling unsafe in the street and the need for change.
Three years later, data reported by The Post shows that police are receiving more reports of crime in our central city than they were in 2019. A brief look at the data would lead you to believe that after three years nothing has changed but, when you look a bit deeper, you realise we’ve been more successful in preventing violence than any other city center in Aotearoa.
Across Aotearoa crime is on the rise. City centers across Aotearoa are seeing 34% more reports of crime in 2023 than they were in 2021, with some like Hamilton seeing an increase as large at 51%. There is one city however that’s an outlier – and that’s Pōneke.
We should be staunch in our position that no violence is acceptable. The first step to reducing violence in the central city is to slow it’s increase. The next step is reversing the trend and that’s what the Pōneke Promise has been designed to do.
Much of our historical approach to violence has been to hide from it or move it somewhere else. The number of people on remand or in prison continues to increase, and yet we don’t see violence decreasing across Aotearoa. If we want to reduce violence, we must be upfront about the causes of violence and commit ourselves to addressing those underlying causes.
The most immediate change we can make to address some of those causes is in our built environment. That’s improving lighting, the design of our central parks, and opening up spaces for everyone to enjoy. The Pōneke Promise has delivered on these and there’s still more work to do, but I think what’s more impressive, and unique to Pōneke, is the work we’ve able to do with our partner organisations to address more systemic causes.
The Downtown City Mission is a partner in the Pōneke Promise. Some of their most important work is going out and talking to members of our community that are so often ignored to make sure they have access to food, housing, healthcare, and most importantly a community that will always be there for them.
Wellington City Council’s continued funding of Take 10 provides a safe space for partygoers and training for hospitality staff has anecdotally been an essential part of making Courtney Place safer for both partygoers and staff themselves, a contribution that many businesses can be proud of.
The biggest strength of Pōneke Promise however is being able to work together, businesses, the Police, central government agencies, community, and the Council. It’s not just a promise made by the Council but one we’ve made collectively. No one person or organization can eliminate violence in Pōneke, but when we work together? The evidence says we can.
