Deb Hann
Senior Constable Deb Hann – On the Beat
Winter is still upon us with some very frosty mornings and lots of fog hitting the area of late.
Please remember to manually turn on your headlights, drive to the conditions and defensively. On the topic of driving, I have been asked to send out a message around keeping our speeds down around schools. Speed restrictions of 40kph are in place around schools. Often, they only last a short distance going past the school itself, but they are there for an important reason. Whether it is an urban or rural school, you must drop your speed. When passing stopped school buses, your speed must drop even lower to 20kph. Children are often not road wise and can be unpredictable – we do not want to see a child hurt.
In this week’s good catch, a Hamilton male was arrested for criminal harassment against a Cambridge local. Police had received a previous complaint about stalking behaviour and as a result had in 2021 served him with a criminal harassment warning letter. The letter informed the male that his actions constituted criminal harassment as his behaviour on two or more occasions within a 12 month period met the criteria of a specified act under the Harassment Act 1997.
Should he persist in acting that way towards the victim, in the following 12 months, the letter warned, he could be arrested and charged. Regardless of this, the male contacted the victim a few months later and a few times further after that. This was recently reported to police who have arrested the male. He will appear in court this week.
This arrest was only possible because the continuing behaviour was reported. Follow through is essential to ensure the effectiveness of orders issued – trespass orders, criminal harassment warnings, police safety orders, protection orders and the like. If you trespass someone from your property for example, but do not call police when they next return, the effectiveness of the notice is immediately lost as a deterrent. More importantly, they could argue that having returned once without challenge, they were invited back to the property, rendering the notice unenforceable. A protection order or restraining order is also only effective if those breaching them are held to account. If the respondent knows you will not report any breaches to police, they have no incentive to stop the offending and the cycle of abuse or harassment continues. Moreover, should they be charged for different breaches in the future, the true level of their offending may not be accurately reflected.
I understand that it can feel difficult to take the step of reporting breaches of such orders and I empathise when victims tell me they are fearful of exacerbating a situation. At the same time, we know from experience that if you do not follow through with subsequent breach reports, the control remains in the hands of the offender, with further abuse being not only able to continue but more likely.
