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National | Crime

Family violence researcher questions MP's claim

A research fellow from the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse (NZFVC)  says she would struggle to believe accusations made by Labour MP Andrew Little, yesterday claiming  Police were under Government orders to "minimise" the number of domestic violence charges they lay to make crime statistics look good.

This follows the release of recent research by the University of Auckland's Family Violence Clearinghouse which show police charges for domestic violence offences dropped by up to 29 per cent from 2009/10 to last year.

It also outlined the number of offences recorded by police fell by nearly 10,000 while investigations into family violence grew from 86,800 in 2010 to 95,100 incidents last year.

NZFVC member Pauline Gulliver says, “That would imply large scale directives, and to be honest with you we get information from the agencies, what he’s implying is that everybody within the agencies has to be aware of it and to be honest, I can’t see how that would be possible”.