Five young people on the roof of an Auckland youth justice facility have come down overnight after a 34-hour stand-off between police negotiators and the youth offenders, who had a series of demands.
The stand-off with authorities began just after midday Saturday when several young people forced their way out of a unit at the Korowai Manaaki youth justice facility in Wiri.
It comes a week after five teens made it onto the roof of a Christchurch Oranga Tamariki facility and a string of similar incidents in the past six months.
Oranga Tamariki deputy chief executive Tusha Penny said there had been a long list of demands from the escapees over the weekend.
"There was a list of demands from everything of they didn't want to go into police custody, they wanted to just stay there on-site and be together, they wanted to talk to girlfriends, they wanted food — it's what we would expect," she told Breakfast.
The agency's deputy chief executive Tusha Penny told Breakfast that five young people surrendered after prolonged negotiations. (Source: Breakfast)
"But the negotiation team did a very good job of talking to them, and of course, we don't give in to all their demands."
Authorities were confident the youth offenders had food, water, and were warm, an Oranga Tamariki spokesperson said earlier.
They said there was no danger to the public at any time.
Earlier, the agency said a "large and experienced team of police", including "some of Auckland's top police negotiators", had been communicating with the offenders.
Penny added today: "We need to look at the ceilings to make sure that it's not so easy to smash the way through."
The deputy chief executive, who has been in her role for eight weeks, said in a statement that the young people involved will be "held criminally accountable" for their actions.
Kelvin Davis says it's possible youth justice facilities are having a bad influence on younger children. (Source: 1News)
She added it had been an "extremely complex, dangerous, and challenging situation" to deal with for emergency responders.
"While we are relieved that everyone is safe, we are also disappointed that it took so long to resolve. These young people were given multiple opportunities to make the right decision and to come down," she said.
"These young people are here at Korowai Manaaki because they have committed serious crimes. Over the weekend, they caused significant damage to parts of our facilities, and they will be held criminally accountable.
"We are in the process of fully assessing the situation, but we know they have damaged parts of the roof, ceiling cavities and security cameras.
"Of the five young people who remained on the roof yesterday, three of them came down at about 6.30 last night, and just after 10.30pm the final two chose to come down."
'We need to make improvements'
Penny said there had been a string of similar incidents since January, but that sometimes "there isn't rhyme nor reason" behind the incidents.
Former police negotiator Lance Burdett explained to Breakfast what discussions might have been had between the youths and negotiators. (Source: Breakfast)
"We have seen this from since January. We've had seven incidents like this with Oranga Tamariki. These are teenage boys. I've brought up a teenage boy.
"For those of you out in New Zealand, who have teenagers, sometimes there isn't a rhyme nor reason.
"But what we need to do is we need to make sure that we have a look at this, and we need to make improvements so that they know that if they want to do it, it's hard.
"It can't be as easy to punch through roofs to crawl over, like they did, so we are being very deliberate at looking at that. And we need to work with some urgency to do what we would call target hardening."
At last week's incident at a Christchurch facility, KFC was used as part of negotiations to get the teenagers to surrender to authorities. Penny said the public was remiss to focus on that aspect of the incident.
"This is not about KFC. This is about the issues we're facing. And we've got to make change," she said. "I know the thoughts around that around the country.
"I, too, had to be convinced of the KFC. I actually said, 'can we not bring in roast chickens?'. But here's the reality. It had been hours. We wanted it to be done safely.
Oranga Tamariki’s chief executive says police and FENZ are helping resolve the incident. (Source: 1News)
"I would hope the country doesn't talk about the nature of the food. I hope that we become a village and, actually, we work out this complexity, how we get through it."
But when asked, former police crisis negotiator Lance Burdett told Breakfast that it was important that incentives offered in negotiations didn't attract future copycats.
"Ultimately, you got to think of people's lives, right? We've got to keep people safe," he said.
"So it might have been just the final stage of getting them down. Of course, you don't know the negotiations, because none of the nothing's been spoken about.
"But you've got to remember that anything you offer is going to be used in the future as leverage by those people.
"If what has been reported [is correct], that they came down because of KFC, then you're gonna have a whole lot of copycats, and particularly in youth facilities, youth want to challenge they want to see where the boundaries are."
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