A resident on Perry St was assaulted on Saturday night when he complained to neighbours about a party at which partygoers were doing burnouts in six cars.
Another member of the public who lives on Perry St and prefers to remain anonymous told the Times-Age that police took two hours to respond to their call about the incident.
However, police said that the call was received 10.27pm and officers attended the scene at 11.39pm.
The resident said a housewarming party a few houses down from them swiftly turned into “a burnout scene”, during which the six vehicles involved burned all the rubber on their tires down to the rims.
The resident said rocks and gravel were hitting their house as the vehicles did burnouts on the street.
They also said that they saw roughly 20 young people filming the assault of the resident on their phones.
When the Times-Age approached police for comment, a spokesperson said police cannot be everywhere at once, “are not always in a position to respond immediately”, and cannot intervene when incidents are not reported to them.
Police said they spoke to the victim of the assault and are making enquiries into the incident.
The spokesperson also said police “respond to calls for service based on demand and the nature of the threat and prioritise situations where people’s safety is at risk”.
Any member of the public who sees dangerous driving is urged to contact police so they can investigate and “hold those involved accountable”, the spokesperson said.
“In situations where people see anti-social driving taking place, we encourage members of the public to report all incidents as they are happening and, if safe to do so, note down the registration and descriptions of vehicles involved.
“We cannot recommend putting yourself in harm’s way and approaching those involved.”
Very true but police numbers are governed and where there priorities are. It’s a government department and has a police minister so what is the wairarapa area priority for police numbers 🤔. The government makes money 💰 on traffic patrol but disturbances cost 🤔. Talk to wairarapa MP and find out what there policy is and find out other parties policy’s are and vote for the one you want.
Police received several calls about this going on because I made a complaint, so did my neighbour. I had hooligans in my driveway scaring my kids and I while I was speaking to the police emergency operator. It should not have taken that long to respond when the police a receiving several calls about the same thing. For the amount of police you see driving around Masterton, they definitely let down the victim on Friday night.. if the police responded in a reasonable time frame it would likely have been avoided all together.