The head of one of New Zealand’s leading shopping districts says retail crime is off the scale and will only worsen as youth offending increases.
Mark Knoff-Thomas, chief executive of the Newmarket Business Association, says crime targeting businesses in his area is only getting worse.
He’s calling for the underlying causes of retail crime to be addressed by the Government and for them to stop crime before it happens, not after.
“It’s a huge problem, and we started to see a bit of a Covid crime wave back in 2020, and it’s just compounded - we’ve had sort of spikes and things with ram-raids and smash and grabs, but underlying all of that is an ongoing problem,” Knoff-Thomas told Breakfast.
“Ram-raids are part of the problem, and they may have changed in their nature over the years, but actually underlying that the foundation of retail crime is pretty tough.”
The crime is so bad that it’s reached the point where some businesses in his area are being forced to lock their doors during trading hours.
“It’s just not a good look for New Zealand in 2023.”
Last year, Knoff-Thomas and a group of other business owners wrote a letter to former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, saying crime has gotten worse.
He said that despite multiple new police ministers, not much has changed since then.
“It hasn’t really changed since then, and we’ve had multiple [police] ministers.
“The government, I think, were very late to the party to realise it was such an issue, and now we’re trying to claw back.”
He said that too often, police are left to clean up on their own after retail crime happens.
He wants the buck to stop being passed to police and wants to see multiple government agencies working together.
“What the police do, with what they’ve got and the pressure they’re under, they do a fantastic job, but often other agencies abdicate some of their responsibilities onto police, and police are left with a mop to sweep everything up.”
“We got some root cause issues that need to be dealt with, but we also have, right here and now today, issues in town centres all across New Zealand where we need more help and more support on the frontline.”
Police Assistant Commissioner for Community and Iwi Chris De Wattignar agreed with Knoff-Thomas, saying the level of retail crime are “symptoms of a bigger problem”.
“It's a complex problem when we get into policing youth crime, or youth-related issues where these behaviours are played out in theft or ram raiding, whatever it might be.”
The store says more than $20,000 worth of products were stolen. (Source: Supplied)
He said that while police are part of the solution, all aspects of society need to be working together.
“The complexity lies in the challenge of young people; police are part of the solution. I’d go further than government agencies, non-government agencies, organisations, social groups, and iwi are all part of the solution.
Knoff-Thomas offered some advice to businesses, saying the best thing they can do is report crime whenever it happens so that resources can be allocated.
“Report crime all the time because if they don’t know about it, we just won't know about it, and the resources won’t be allocated,” he said.
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