Police Minister Chris Hipkins is "concerned" about the spike in ram-raids hitting New Zealand this year as Auckland woke up to three more burglaries on Friday morning.
Police said in a statement on Friday they're investigating a burglary at the Night 'n Day store at Onehunga Mall at around 1am.
"At this stage our enquiries are ongoing to establish what has been taken and who is responsible," a police spokesperson said.
Footage from the scene shows the entrance and front windows of the store severely damaged, with a massive hole.
The second incident occurred in Howick where police said they received a report of a potential break-in at a Whitford Road retail address at around 11:12pm.
Once police arrived on the scene it was established the door was left open by mistake.
The third incident was in Penrose and relates to stolen items being located at a commercial address.
Hipkins revealed in Parliament on Thursday there had been 129 ram-raids since May and "almost all of them" had been committed by people under 18.
RNZ reported last month there had been a 400 percent increase in ram raids in five years.
When questioned by the ACT Party about the spike in ram-raids, Hipkins told the House 38 offenders had been identified or arrested with "almost all of these people are under 18 years old, and their median age was 15".
A further 27 offenders had been seen on CCTV, but police don't yet know who they are. Of the 129 ram-raids, 84 occurred in Auckland, Hipkins added.
In the last five years, ram-raids and smash-and-grab robberies have increased dramatically with a 400 percent increase - with 76 percent of those being caught under the age of 18, RNZ reported last month.
Hipkins said he was "concerned" about the spike in crime, but said, this hadn't "suddenly sprung from nowhere".
"I'm certainly concerned about it, we're seeing a spike and particularly that high profile kind of elevated level of youth offending and that is something that I think we should all as a country be concerned about," Hipkins told Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking on Friday morning.
"This hasn't sort of suddenly sprung from nowhere, these young people are disengaged from the rest of society. They're not fearing the consequences of their actions and I think that is something to be concerned about."
A Newshub-Reid Research poll in May found most Kiwis think former Police Minister Poto Williams was too soft on crime.
The poll asked: Is the current Police Minister too soft on crime? More than two-thirds - 68.3 percent - said yes, while just 18.3 percent said no.
It's a view shared by the Opposition, with National Party Police spokesperson Mark Mitchell saying the poll shows Kiwis have lost confidence in the Government.
"I think the result of your poll clearly shows that the public has lost confidence in this Government," he told Newshub in May. "They are soft on crime."
But Hipkins, who became Police Minister in June, doesn't believe the Government is soft on crime.
"The reasons for the youth offending being up are many and varied, but there are consequences. Unfortunately, those consequences aren't necessarily deterring the offending," Hipkins told Newstalk ZB.
"If I look at the numbers, I think we've had over 250 young people arrested just in the last couple of months and over a thousand charges laid against them. The police are being very proactive and following these up. Just yesterday, we saw an example where there was a ram-raid of a jewellery store … the police are being very proactive about following that, but the underlying causes are quite complex, these kids are just disengaged."
Hipkins said a lot of the kids committing ram-raids and smash-and-grabs are coming from really complex backgrounds and don't have a supporting and nurturing environment.
Even though the latest figures are "quite difficult to stomach", Hipkins said youth offending is actually decreasing.
"We've seen an elevation in the profile of it. The overall level of youth offending, the numbers are quite difficult to stomach given what we are seeing," he said.
"The overall level of youth offending is actually trending down, but what we're seeing is that particularly north of Waikato, so Waikato, Auckland and Northland, we're seeing a real elevation in the profile of the offender, even though there's less of it, although there's been a bit of a spike in recent months overall, in the last five years, there's been less of it. The profile of it certainly in recent months has really increased."
Hipkins was asked why offenders are not locked up after committing these crimes, to which he responded by saying, "jail itself does not deter offending".
"In jail, they are joining gangs, there is a higher chance of serious offending with a custodial sentence. Putting them in jail does not solve the problem."
