*This story was first published in March 2017. It was one of our most popular stories for the year.*
We joined a Manurewa police unit as they patrolled areas popular with bunking youths, after New Zealand Police announced a crackdown on wagging students.
They are undertaking a two-week long operation, targeting kids who should be in school but aren't.
Over the next two weeks police across Auckland will be patrolling shopping centres, fast food outlets and anywhere with free wifi.
At 11:30am on Tuesday, police were chasing down three children - not in school uniform and dodging cars - in an effort to evade police.
One of them was just 12 years old, another was 14. The younger boy claimed he'd only recently moved to Auckland from out of town, and the other said he was between education providers.
Normally police would take children like this back to school, but when they're not enrolled there's nowhere to take them to.
"The sad state of affairs is that once a person starts truanting and they get behind in their schooling, then schooling becomes really hard, really painful," said Inspector David Glossop.
"Sadly people that are truants are committing offences. They're also becoming victims of crime so it's a really serious issue for us."
Karyl Puklowski from Auckland City Education Services agreed.
"Once a young person becomes isolated from their school it becomes really hard for them to reconnect.
"The statistics for last year are not yet available, but in 2015, per day around 31,000 students were unjustifiably absent [and] nearly 9000 were classified as frequent truants - absent for three or more days in a survey week."
Newshub.
