They included incidents of verbal abuse and aggressive language towards staff from customers at public facilities.<\/p>\n
A council spokesperson said incidents also included visitors to aquatic facilities ignoring lifeguard instructions, breaking rules, littering and damaging property.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the past few months, staff have been encouraged to report incidents to help the council understand patterns and identify areas needing attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGrath said politicians often copped abuse, but staff out on the street should be left alone to do their jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t experienced it, but I know some elected members in the past have.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he liked getting out in the community and most people were great.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s our job not to hide and I\u2019m always happy to answer questions and chat.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, my kids stopped coming out with me years ago because a 10-minute trip often turned into an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n
A council spokesperson said it had hired a training provider to help staff manage challenging interactions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis training equips staff with practical techniques to manage challenging or confrontational behaviour safely and effectively, including knowing when it is appropriate to step away from a situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe training is tailored to each facility, addressing the specific situations staff are most likely to encounter in their day-to-day work.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGrath said the council fully supported its staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis behaviour is unacceptable, and those responsible should be aware that it could lead to serious consequences, including prosecution.\u201d<\/p>\n
LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They included incidents of verbal abuse and aggressive language towards staff from customers at public facilities. A council…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1903,806,44183,2199,5205,71,6101,305,302,13457,10934,56454,4754,3607,111,43,139,5006,69,90,3109,766,15160,312,1516,21419,27561,127248,8218,379],"class_list":["post-391738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-abuse","tag-as","tag-behaviour","tag-city","tag-council","tag-from","tag-good","tag-have","tag-its","tag-look","tag-mayor","tag-mcgrath","tag-members","tag-napier","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-not","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-public","tag-reports","tag-richard","tag-says","tag-staff","tag-towards","tag-triple","tag-tripled","tag-warns","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}