O utside Rose Cottage Dairy, layers of flowers are drying on the footpath. Store-bought arrangements are mixed with jasmine, rosemary and geraniums hand-cut from local gardens. For the past week, the shop has remained shuttered, lace curtains closed, corrugated iron rolled down over the door. Two weeks have passed since Janak Patel was murdered as he worked at this small Sandringham shop, allegedly stabbed after he pursued a man who had stolen a cash register.
His death came at the close of a year that has left store owners across New Zealand reeling from a series of robberies, ram raids and break-ins. He greets customers with a smile β but says every new face, or slightly unusual bit of behaviour, sends a bolt of anxiety though him. They are small, typically family-owned, and many are operated by first or second generation immigrant families. Over the past year, they have also found themselves a target for robberies, often carried out with the involvement of very young children.
Before they could secure it, she says her husband began sleeping on the shop floor to try and scare off any intruders. S ubhash Batra stands at the entrance of Fume vape shop. He has a warm smile, groomed moustache and a house full of trophies for table tennis, which he plays nationally. His three sons came to New Zealand to study and live β and when he and his wife joined them, he said it sounded like paradise. This year, the vape store has been targeted for robbery five times.
A few months ago two girls, years old, robbed him and his wife at knife-point after he refused to serve them without proof of age. The robbery left the couple terrified: they erected new caging around the doors and blocked one of the entranceways with a large wooden plinth. But Batra was also shocked by the age of the attackers. We all come from immigrant families.
He was temporarily running the dairy where he died, while its owner was overseas. Overall, youth crime in New Zealand has trended steadily down since This year however, a few categories began to buck the overall trend: youth offending rose β although it has still not returned to anywhere near levels β and among very young offenders β those aged β car robberies have approximately doubled over the past five years. A number of the drivers of these cars were aged between 10 and 13 years old β too young even for the residential youth justice system.
