Police Minister Judith Collins admits there aren't enough police officers and is in talks with Prime Minister John Key over boosting numbers.
Recent polling indicates New Zealand First could hold the balance of power at next year's election and leader Winston Peters has said a sizeable increase in police numbers will be a bottom line.
Mr Peters said an acceptable number would be between 1000 and 2000 extra police officers rolled out over a number of years.
The Northland MP asked the Prime Minister about policing numbers in question time yesterday, saying there were fewer police officers per capita now than when Mr Key had promised to boost numbers in 2008.
Mr Key said there were 600 more police officers on the beat, and improvements in mobile technology meant they were more efficient.
But this morning Ms Collins told Newstalk ZB that the Government had not kept up with its own "modest" goal of one police officer for every 500 people.
There is about one officer to every 526 people because of population increases. Family violence rates had increased and put pressure on resources, she said.
Ms Collins said a larger police force was needed if police were to turn up to crimes such as "dine-and-dash" thefts. Police in Auckland recently decided not to investigate at least two "dine-and-dash" thieves, saying it was a civil matter.
"I obviously can't get involved in individual cases, but I would say that that is probably an issue, one of the indicators around the fact that we do need more police."
Ms Collins said she met Mr Key in early June to talk about increasing officer numbers and what police believed was needed, but she could not detail possible numbers or timeframes.
Labour's police spokesman Stuart Nash said Mr Key was incorrect that there had been 600 extra police officers since 2008. Instead, there had been an increase of 223 full-time equivalent constabulary employees, he said.
June crime statistics showed a surge in burglaries had driven up the overall "victimisation rate" by 3.1% from 2014/15 to 2015/16.
That amounts to 12,060 more victimisations (a person may be a victim multiple times in a year). At the time, Ms Collins said most of the increase was attributable to burglaries.
- Newstalk ZB and NZME
