Police in the New Zealand city of Gisborne have decided to stop telling the local newspaper about incidents of crime. It is holding back the data so that "people feel safer".
Instead of listing every incident the police force will "streamline information" to provide "an overview" of criminal activity.
"Our daily feed of information to the media does not provide the right recipe for the community in terms of important information they need to know," said police commander Sam Aberahama.
The response from the Gisborne Herald was a sarcastic article mocking the change of policy, Crime, what crime?
Editor Jeremy Muir called the unilateral restriction on crime news as straight out of "the communist manual".
And the country's leading daily newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, was equally dismissive. In an editorial, Keeping mum on crime won't make it stop, it challenged the notion that what the public doesn't know can't hurt them.
"It is wholly misguided," said the article. "People will feel safer in their homes and on the streets once the crime rate is reduced and the police 'clearance' rate of crime improves with more lawbreakers caught and prosecuted...
"Suppressing the information available to the public is the last refuge of policy failure."
Sources: New Zealand Herald/Gisborne Herald
