Police seek recruits from Hong Kong, Singapore and UK
5:00AM Saturday February 24, 2007
By Ruth Berry

An extra 200 police officers from the United Kingdom and a smaller number from Hong Kong and Singapore are to be recruited as local police struggle to meet new frontline targets.

Their recruitment advertising campaign is under review as are training rules to ensure recruits whose second language is English are not being set up to fail.

New Zealand First negotiated an extra 1250 police by 2009 in its confidence-and-supply agreement with Labour at the last election - 1000 of whom will be dedicated to "frontline" policing.

It means this country will be policed more heavily on a per head of population basis - but less heavily than several comparable countries.

Police human resources general manager Wayne Annan said sworn police officer numbers were up to more than 8000 - a milestone, with the induction of 72 new recruits this week.

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