An Auckland MP is concerned about the amount of time police are spending monitoring events - rather than being on the beat in communities.

Maungakiekie MP Greg Fleming is floating the idea of allowing police to charge for their presence at some large profitable events. 

He says while on patrol with two local community officers, they told him they'd been at a large sporting event. 

"They said - yeah, what would be amazing is if we could make you charge for these events, therefore instead of taking on-duty officers off the front line, we could offer overtime shifts."

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