Listen Now: 
The Inspector in charge of youth, community and Maori policing in South Auckland says truancy often points to other problems in the family.
Counties Manukau police intend to run a crack down on truancy when schools return.
Warwick Morehu says not all truants are troublemakers, but there is a small core who will commit crime.
He says the police need to concentrate on those individuals and find out what else is happening in their lives.
"Let’s find out whats actually driving this, no kai in the cupboard, no lunch, no clothes, no shoes, all that sort of stuff. Theres a lot going on there. You go back in to the families and you'll find that. We concentrate on the five drivers of crime, unfortunately alot of our families and that a lot of those drivers are in there, theres alcohol problems, youth. You go back to that whanau base and it is about asking some probing questions in the right manner and saying look maybe there is something else that we can do here to help. Maybe we might be able to link them up with some agency get to the underlying causes of whats going on," he says.
Copyright © 2013, UMA Broadcasting Ltd
RELATED NEWS
