Newshub can reveal a gas station minutes from an Auckland post shop closing due to skyrocketing crime has itself been ram-raided every year since buying the business.
Meanwhile, Police data covering our main centres showed crime rates are trending the wrong way despite millions of dollars in Government intervention.
Titirangi post shop owner Aboli Bhave told Newshub he used to feel safe - but that's changed.
"This is a beautiful place. The community is excellent here, wonderful people [and] very good support from the community. But after these incidents, I feel very unsafe," Bhave said.
Bhave is throwing in the towel after almost two decades in business due to a seventh break-in.
"A big decision it was. I was in two minds, but then I thought our happiness, my family, I have to give preference."
Just around the corner, Kanna Sharma's GAS Kaurilands station, ironically, resembles something closer to a jail cell.
"I have been ram-raided almost five times now. Shops are being ram-raided left, right and centre now - fish and chip, book shop. There's no accountability, no consequence."
Data analysed by Newshub shows recorded crimes in Auckland lept from 87,971 in the year to March 2022, to almost 110,000 this year.
In Wellington city, they're up from 9800 to 12,290, and in Christchurch city from 25,547 to 35,941.
"We are seeing businesses who are not feeling safe. We're seeing a rise across the country in anti-social behaviour and criminal activity and we want the Government to act," said Canterbury Chamber of Commerce CEO Leeann Watson.
In Auckland, shop owners like Sharma appear largely united on how to stop this kind of activity.
"Six months community service, tap on your hand, be a good boy, be a good girl, go home. So people are thinking it is okay to do it because you are minors. The law needs to change," Sharma said.
But Prime Minister Chris Hipkins claimed retailers are giving him a slightly different message.
"They are concerned for those young people. So they don't want to be victims, they hate what's happened to them and what's happened to their business but they also want to know that the Government is working to address the underlying causes of that offending."
Still, at the end of the day, even he admits the numbers are trending the wrong way.
"We've still got more work to do to turn down the level of violent crime that retail businesses are experiencing. It isn't acceptable."
A troubling outlook that's costing Kiwis their livelihoods.
