THE AGE OF BOLLARDS AND ROLLER DOORS?
Ram raids of high-end fashion stores, jewellers and malls might be just a passing fad for kids, but it’s a craze that could have lasting effects.
The awkward reality of youth crime is that just when you think you’ve got them figured out, the next lot smash through the glass wall into adolescence.
Over the past few months, some of them have been doing it literally. A daring mall drivethrough in Auckland, the targeting of high-end clothing stores and the shock of four children aged between 7 and 12 stealing toys in Hamilton have garnered nationwide attention, but these are the tip of the iceberg in many communities.
Where dairies and liquor stores have been the flashpoints in the past few years, fuelled by an underground cigarette economy, the new generation is targeting retailers of a different ilk too.
On Saturday even a pre-loved clothing store in Christchurch found itself the victim of a ram raid.
In a statement in April, Police Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers said national intelligence showed 88% of offenders involved in ram raidstyle burglaries were under the age of 20 and the majority were actually under the age of 17.
‘‘As a clear youth offending issue, this is wider than police,’’ Chambers said. ‘‘We need our communities to work alongside us and partner agencies to support young people onto a better path.’’
While youth crime in general is on a downward trajectory, the fact that some are now stealing cars, picking unusual targets to drive into, and then broadcasting it on social media has spawned not so much a moral panic as a moral brood – how do we stop this?
Palmerston North Hunting and Fishing owner Simon O’Connor says his mates joke to him that his store started the trend when it was hit in February.
O’Connor’s store is also a symbol of another kind – an Aotearoa where commercial stores need roller doors or bollards to survive. He said the ram raid caused $100,000 worth of damage, and the people who did it made off with just $500 worth of stock.
While he’s insured, the impacts of the raid had compounded in the months afterwards, when it became clear his security system had been compromised.
‘‘Basically within a month we would have probably had $5000 worth of stuff stolen out of the shop because these people realised our system wouldn’t go off.’’
O’Connor has no interest in dealing with a similar situation again. He’s installed another 15 bollards around his store, at a cost of $24,000, ‘‘straight out of the back pocket’’.
‘‘Is it fair that I have to do that? No, I don’t think it is, but what else am I supposed to do?
‘‘At least in these ram raids, generally speaking, nobody’s got a knife to the throat.
‘‘It’s just property, if you know what I mean, and that’s the only saving grace.
‘‘But these kids, man, they know nothing can happen to them. And as long as there’s nothing that happens to them, there’s not going to be any change.’’
Martin Exon, co-owner of Christchurch preloved clothing store To Be Continued . . . said one of the effects of the ram raid on his business on Saturday could be the installation of roller doors.
‘‘We don’t want to be in a concrete bunker. That’s not what this place is about, and it shouldn’t be like that. But it is getting like that, unfortunately.
‘‘It’s a real shame, especially for residents who live next door. Instead of a pretty open store, they’re likely going to have a store which is just covered in iron.’’
As a clear youth offending issue, this is wider than police. We need our communities to work alongside us and partner agencies to support young people onto a better path.
Police Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers
Huffer managing director Kate Berry, whose Ponsonby shop lost between $15,000 and $20,000 worth of product in a raid on Saturday, said people didn’t seem to care as much when Ō tara or Mā ngere shops were the victims.
‘‘We should say no as a society to having roller grates on Ponsonby Rd, and we should have said no years ago to having to have roller grates in Ō tara as well.
‘‘I feel sorry for all of those who’ve had to live with this in South Auckland because no-one
stood up for them.
‘‘But because it’s now impacting Ponsonby and everyone else, people say ‘oh, that’s outrageous’. But it’s always been outrageous.’’
Berry said there needed to be a national conversation about good parenting, and how to help those parents who are struggling to give their kids love, support and routine.
‘‘At 2am you should not be in my store. You should either be asleep or you should be at work at a night shift. What does it take for us to say enough is enough?’’
Berry’s solution has found favour with some in academia too. University of Otago psychological medicine associate professor Joe Boden, who is deputy director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study, said each generation’s crimes had a different ‘‘flavour’’, but they all boiled down to the same root causes, of poverty and family dysfunction.
Where the Covid generation differed was that the peers heavily influencing them weren’t always immediately around them, but a whole world away on TikTok and other social media channels, Boden said.
In the same way that social media can make a quiche recipe go viral, it can also instantly put a new crime trend, potentially with instructions, right in front of the eyeballs of teens. It was a challenge for police, he said: ‘‘You’re always on the back foot, right?’’
Boden said identifying children with conduct problems and getting their parents into a parent training programme like Incredible Years was the key to getting on the front foot.
‘‘Only 3% of kids who have conduct problems are getting any sort of treatment, and we know that if you can provide treatment at an early age, that treatment is much more effective than if you try to do it later.
‘‘The most important thing is getting it early because the kids who have conduct problems early are the ones who basically end up being the prison population.
‘‘If you actually are able to treat a proportion of these successfully you will reduce that issue.
‘‘You also reduce the social contagion that occurs in adolescents, where their behaviour spreads to other kids who engage in it for a while, but might not necessarily make a career of it.
‘‘What’s needed is a big investment in these kinds of services. And, of course, it’s unpalatable in the sense that it’s expensive, and you won’t see the results for 20 years, but that’s
what’s needed.’’
Security consultant for Scope Precision Intelligence Hamish Kerr said police were doing their best to handle youth crime, but the new generation had learned they were unlikely to be caught when fleeing a crime scene in a car, and even if they were, they would likely be told ‘‘don’t do it again’’.
‘‘They can basically operate with impunity at the moment.
‘‘The process as a young person, if you get caught up with the police, it’s pretty much a case of writing a letter of apology to the victim, and here’s your chance to change. And they do see that it was a free pass, there’s no doubt about that.’’
The soaring cost of living and the potential for interest rate rises were also having real-world effects already, and those around the insurance industry were worried about the potential for more damage as families became more desperate.
‘‘There are a whole lot of challenging conditions at the moment, both economic and social, which means, from an insurance risk perspective, we’re very acutely aware of the current elevated risk,’’ Kerr said.
‘‘I don’t think we have seen these type of risk conditions, as they are currently, for quite some time.’’
In other words, buckle up, we could be entering the age of the roller door and the bollard.