The Government is on track to meet the election promise of getting 1800 new police on the streets by conducting training in Auckland, police minister Stuart Nash says.
Photo: RNZ / Richard Tindiller
Mr Nash told Newshub Police needed to train 1000 recruits next year to meet that target and were well on track.
One-thousand-one-hundred officers would be on the frontline while the others would be in specialist crime squads, he said.
Police would be adding police training in Auckland to that done at the Royal New Zealand Police College (RNZPC) in Porirua to help meet the target.
Inspector Iain Saunders of the RNZPC said the initiative of making training available in Auckland came from direct feedback from potential recruits, many of whom said moving to Wellington for 16 weeks was a barrier to joining the police.
"We are incredibly excited about this opportunity to train some of our future officers in Tāmaki-Makaurau," he said.
"We are bringing some of our trainers up from the RNZPC to ensure consistency in the training.
"We have a great bunch of recruits in this Auckland wing and we will be following a few willing participants and sharing their journeys across our social media pages."
Northland, Auckland, Gisborne and Hawke's Bay will be priorities to get extra officers.