AMID calls for more policing resources across the Tweed/Byron Local Area Command, Murwillumbah residents have made pleas for their town not to be ignored.

Murwillumbah man Bob Axford said residents had been distributing a petition calling for a 24-hour police presence in the town.

"The politicians sound like they'd be happy for it to happen... but (they say) the statistics don't support it,” Mr Axford said.

Mr Axford said many residents believed a greater police presence could have prevented a number of recent violent incidents, such as the stabbing death of Charles Larter in Knox Park in June.

"I think they're doing a great job but I think they're stretched thin and there are a lot of people on sick leave they don't have replacements for,” he said.

Fellow Murwillumbah resident Karen Halliday said she'd once waited several hours after an incident as the two officers at Murwillumbah Police Station were unable to leave their post.

Kunghur resident Ena Scriven said she was greatly concerned about the low policing numbers on the Tweed.

"I feel (the police) need support and I'm quite concerned with the workload they're expected to carry,” she said.

"More and more will just have to go off on stress relief.”

Lismore MP Thomas George said the lack of officers amid a spate of violent crimes was "a major concern”.

Mr George said he'd spoken to Police Minister Troy Grant and would present the petition to him.

But he said it was vital for statistics to back up the calls for more police, and urged residents to report all crimes - and get an incident number - even if they felt it may be a "waste of time”.

Mr Grant and NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller acknowledged the concerns at the official opening of the new Tweed Police head- quarters on Friday and said the re-engineering of the force may help to bring more resources to the state's north. "The Local Area Command model for a long time has discriminated against country towns and smaller communities,” Mr Grant said.

"We want to move away from that approach.”

A Tweed/Byron LAC officer, who asked not to be named, said while a 24-hour station in Murwillumbah might not he necessary, more officers throughout the command would allow for a greater police presence across the region. He said it was heartening to know the community was fighting for more officers.

"There definitely needs to be more staff down there, in my opinion,” he said.

He said there was still no certainty on how the re-engineering would look for the region and argued the matter of staffing was a long-standing, separate issue.

"(Re-engineering) is a problem as no-one know what it looks like and I just don't know how many (new officers) it'll give us,” he said.

With Tweed/Byron officers often making cross-border enquiries for their colleagues from other regions, he said a uniform approach to defining how many police a region needs wouldn't work for this command.

"Some things would be the same in other border commands, but the Tweed/Byron is different in that it is a massive growth area,” he said.