An Auckland wine shop has been hit by thefts three times in 10 days as the family-owned business suffers $250,000 in losses from ram raids and burglaries.
Glengarry Wines general manager Liz Wheadon walked Breakfast's Anna Burns-Francis through the damage caused by another burglary at another one of the chain's stores.
The manager said she believed the people who stole wine from the shop in the early hours of the morning were minors and deliberately hit the same store multiple times.
She manages the family-owned chain of 14 shops in Auckland and estimates around $250,000 of losses have happened as a result of recent raids.
"We've spent huge amounts of money on security and prevention," Wheadon said.
"The store's got bollards. We've got security cameras. We've got fully-functioning alarms that sound.
"Everything that we've been advised to do, we've put them in place. It still happens."
Mark Knoff-Thomas, chief executive of the Newmarket Business Association, says crime targeting businesses in his area is only getting worse. (Source: Breakfast)
Wheadon said she believed the alcohol was being stolen in order to on-sell to others. She said changes needed to be made in order to make her employees feel safe at work.
"We're a family-owned business within retailing and Auckland since the early 40s.
"We want to continue doing that … and to do that, we need to see the change that sees our staff being able to come to work and feel safe."
Figures released yesterday showed an uptick in the number of charges laid against young people last year as compared to the year before.
It’s something new Police Minister Ginny Andersen will be looking to turn around. (Source: 1News)
Meanwhile, new Police Minister Ginny Andersen said retail crime, alongside repeat offending, were her two top priorities entering the job for the first time.
Long-term trends show offender numbers down
Speaking to Breakfast, Children's Commissioner Frances Eivers said the reasons behind burglaries and crime by kids were nuanced but that the long-term trend was down.
"I would be interested to see what research comes out to say what the impact of Covid has been on the lives of these young people and whether there's some correlation between that and this offending," she said.
"Youth crime offending has decreased up to about 65%, over the decade, before Covid struck.
"Even looking at the 2022 statistics, 1416 youth offenders went through the court system, back in 2007, we were up at in the 5000s. From that, numbers have dropped, and that was exactly because of the work between communities and collaborating."
Judge Eivers said children who appeared in court usually came from rough home lives.
"I believe that most of these children, these young people, aren't from homes where things are great for them," she said.
"What I found, when I was a judge in the Youth Court in Manukau, is that most of those young people coming to a court were not in school.
"In 10 years, I could count on one hand the number of young ones who were in school. They were kicked out by the age of 12. They've got nowhere to go, they wander the streets. It's not a surprise, they end up offending."
She said fixes like ACT's suggestion to give offenders ankle bracelets were a "lazy fix" and that more wraparound support services were needed for children from broken homes.
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