New infrastructure design features are being introduced to police stations around the country to enhance safety at their front counters.

The new features are being introduced following a review of police station security measures in September of last year.

The Mount Maunganui Police Station. Photo: File

NZ Police assistant commissioner Allan Boreham says the new features are designed to deal with the most likely threats at publicly accessible police premises.

'The safety of our staff, volunteers and visitors present in our police premises is of paramount importance and is a real priority for Police.

'While many of our front counters have some of the required infrastructure design features already in place, a number need enhancement and/or redesign and we have a project underway to develop a consistent nationwide plan to achieve this.”

The review also highlighted a number of premises where more immediate practical steps were needed to increase security. Allan says they've identified 105 stations in this category around the country, which are typically smaller stations.

'Increased security measures we are looking at include, issuing staff and volunteers in these stations with Officer Safety Alarms as soon as possible.”

Some districts have also taken the opportunity of looking into kiosks which are only manned by volunteers and some will be closed until the completion of a more comprehensive audit as part of the project.

Allan says volunteers perform many different roles and they were not suspending their volunteer network, but police do need to ensure they are performing roles in a safe environment.

'We don't want to make our premises less welcoming to members of our communities but we must do all we can to ensure our staff and members of the public are safe.”

Other measures will vary from station to station, but may include positioning of CCTV to cover the entrance and front counters installation of duress alarms at front counters.

In some of these stations one of the options may be to limit public access to times when constabulary staff are on the premises.

'This does not mean the stations will permanently close, but that public access at some stations may be, as an interim measure, restricted to those times when a constabulary/authorised officers is available to work at the front counter,” says Allan