If you think “Aotearoa” is fast descending into a hell-hole of juvenile crime… well, you’re not wrong.
I’m not talking about the infantile antics of the gang of criminals infesting the Beehive, of course. As you all know, Auckland especially has been subject to a veritable reign of terror mostly involving robberies and ram-raids. In the most notorious incident, dairy worker Janek Patel was allegedly murdered. Dairy owners and other retailers have been attacked with baseball bats and machetes.
It may be cold comfort to our Kiwi cousins to know that things are just as bad in some cities on the other side of the Tasman.
Darwin’s retailers are warning violent behaviour has increased to the point where their staff are no longer safe and it is driving customers away from the city centre.
It’s a case of same-same-but-different: the criminality is similar and just as violent, even if the methods differ.
In Darwin’s central Smith Street shopping mall, food retailers and other business owners have claimed they are losing money hand over fist because drunk itinerants regularly brawl and aggressively demand money from their customers.
“People are scared, they are demanding food and money from my customers, which is very much [affecting] the business, and we don’t know where to get help with this problem,” one of the mall’s food shop owners said.
Ashvin Gill — who manages another business in the mall — said she regularly has to lock her front door after violent, drunk itinerants try to force their way in […]
A worker from another shop said she was attacked recently while walking to her car in a car park off the mall after work.
Such attacks are so common now in Darwin that the worker didn’t even bother reporting it to the police.
Like New Zealand’s ram raiders, shopkeepers are regularly attacked by violent criminals.
“Two Friday nights ago, I got punched in the mouth because I didn’t want someone sitting in my doorway and he objected,” he said.
“Two weeks before that I had a drunk guy come in and completely trash the shop.
“I’ve had rocks thrown at my window, rocks thrown at me.”
A Darwin councillor with a CBD business has installed a lockable panic room in his store for staff and customers.
“If the shop gets trashed, the shop gets trashed, and they can watch on CCTV and call police.”
As also in New Zealand, the media are notably shy about reporting the demographics of the criminals.
But there are clues…
We’ve seen what’s happened in Tennant Creek and Katherine. We’ve just lost Alice Springs […]
Darwin has always had itinerant drinking camps in its parks, but local charities have found there are more rough sleepers than usual this year.
Clancy — who brought his guitar to a camp strewn with beer cans — said he was here to avoid remote alcohol restrictions and visit family.
“Sometimes we got a lot of problem in our community,” he said.
“It is restricted with liquor.”
MSN
Can anybody guess which “community” he’s talking about?
Anybody!
Half the solution to a problem is naming it in the first place. Which is the last thing the legacy media and politicians want to do.