21 Jun 2018

Dairy re-design could mitigate robberies - council

2:05 pm on 21 June 2018

There are calls to rethink the way dairies are designed to keep owners safer in the wake of another attack on an Auckland shop.

Police cordon off the scene at Grey Lynn supprette, Hylite Dairy after a mother and son were stabbed.

Police cordon off the scene at Grey Lynn supprette, Hylite Dairy after a mother and son were stabbed. Photo: RNZ/Anneke Smith

Sunny Kaushal is the President of the Auckland-based Crime Prevention Group - he used to think attacks on dairy owners just happened in the city's south, west and in Mount Roskill.

But on Tuesday night his perspective changed - after a woman and her adult son were attacked in their Grey Lynn dairy.

The Grey Lynn dairy has since reopened after police cordoned off the shop to examine the scene.

"The central Auckland was comparatively safer but now this attack in Grey Lynn is telling us that now there's no such area that we can say is safer," he said.

Police said the son was minding the Hylite Dairy at the time, when two men - one of whom was armed with a knife - entered the store.

Linda Wing lives in Grey Lynn and said the area was not as safe as it used to be.

"It's been getting a bit heavy around here, there seems to be more people on the streets," she said.

Crime has become so much worse for Auckland dairy owners, they're considering abandoning shop, Mr Kaushal said.

Not all store owners have that option, he said.

"The people who cannot sell or who have no other alternative for their living ... they are putting the grill like structure, those bars and all, and are putting themselves behind the metal bars to safeguard themselves," he said.

Auckland Council urban planner Ludo Campbell-Reid said the generic design of a dairy inadvertently encourages crime.

"The windows are completely often pasted over with signage. We know what's for sale in these dairies, but the big industries are actually paying some of the dairy owners to put the pamphlets up and put the advertising up," Mr Campbell-Reid said.

"They're creating this place within the shop which is quieter, it's concealed, it's hidden and I think if we opened up the dairies and you could see in and out people wouldn't misbehave and it would help," he said.

The sale of cigarettes was also part of the problem, and locating them away from the entrance could prevent 'smash 'n grab' robberies, Mr Campbell-Reid said.

But Mr Kaushal did not think a dairy redesign was the answer to tackling aggravated robberies.

"At the end of the day, the problem is not the dairy or the dairy owners, the focus needs to be on the offenders.

"How do we stop them? How do we tell them that they will get caught if they do such kind of crimes," he said.

Many offenders have no fear of the law or the consequences, Mr Kaushal said.