The three nights I spent with frontline police officers in two districts may go some way to answering that question.
Henderson police station: the shift briefing reveals a 15-year-old burglar was picked up a few hours earlier. The teenager was found wedged under a mattress.
He may find it harder to hide from the 35 burglary charges he now faces, though. A good day on the job for him is 10-to-15 break-ins.
I am pretty surprised; I won’t be by the end of three long nights.
The police radio squawks to life with a report of four teens trying to break into cars. A member of the public has confronted them and got a kick in the head for his troubles. The teens have gapped it into a nearby park. A dog team’s on the way and so are we.
Thirty minutes of literally sniffing around and two are cuffed and in the back of cars; ages 14 and 15.
The 14-year-old old tries to give the police someone else’s details, but his face is too familiar for that to work. If you’ve got frequent flyer points for this carry-on, he’d be a solid silver card holder. He’s already on burglary charges and wanted for allegedly breaching bail multiple times.
But here’s the kicker; he is supposed to be on curfew from seven at night until seven in the morning. Time check 2:25am and all is clearly not well.
There’s been a spate of stolen vehicles in the district and that can lead to much worse. At 4:45am on one shift, four kids are caught trying to break into cars.
I call them kids because two of them are 13...13 and out after four in the morning.
In between all of this the incident screen on the police computer is flashing like a disco ball with job after job… family violence, general disorder, something about an air rifle. It is relentless. The flat-line calmness of the dispatcher’s voice belies the nasty nature of what’s being dealt with.
Out south, it’s a different chapter in the same story. An out-of-control party has spilled onto the street. A sergeant tries to arrest two teenagers. He’s shoulder charged by one and forced to draw his taser when the second tries to pile in on the action. A warning that he is about to be zapped with fifty thousand volts prompts him to bolt.
Lying on the ground are discarded makeshift weapons, broken glass and a substantial knife that someone’s off-loaded when the police turned up.
A 15-year-old is under arrest.
Someone’s ripped the planks off a near-by fence and laid into a couple of late model hatch-backs, bashing in the front and back windscreen. A young woman has been smashed in the face while holding her baby.
Across town at the Henderson station, police discover the 14-year-old burglar they picked up will be spending his 15th birthday in the cells. No-one is celebrating.
Newshub.
