Three different Auckland jewellery store owners say that crime in the city has never been so rampant and they are often worried if their business will be robbed next.
There's been a spate of crimes involving break-ins and burglaries recently. Last week, two luxury fashion stores - Louis Vuitton and Gucci - were ram-raided on Queen St.
Jewellery heists in Auckland are often brazen attacks that are usually committed by teens with no fear.
It's sometimes even a daylight robbery while there are people in stores. The teens are armed with hammers and axes and smash cabinets while customers are present.
Jaynend Raniga's jewellery shop has been burgled four times in the past two years.
"They have either hammers or axes or something ready and they break the front glass, come right in," he told The Project.
"One guy's breaking all the cabinets. It's heartbreaking because you have worked so hard to get to where you are in life and somebody comes and destroys it in seconds."
Mitesh Killa's shop was robbed twice in three months. Thieves burst into his store while they were serving customers.
"Straight away the heart rate goes up, I started shivering. I just couldn't do anything. I was just totally, totally shocked to see the way everything happened," he said.
"We put everything away at night but now they're starting to come during the normal working hours."
Killa's biggest fear is that any day, they might come and "just put a knife through us".
A third jewellery shop owner, Harish Lodhia, has had three aggravated robberies at his store in broad daylight.
"These guys are daredevils. They will come with axes and hammers, and then they smash my entire shop in front of our eyes and we are helpless. We stand there and we can't do a thing," he said.
"To be honest, every morning I wake up and I am thinking, 'I wonder which store got done'."
Every other day there's another headline, another shop done over.
The big chains are a magnet for thieves too. Michael Hill stores have been robbed and ram-raided at least 10 times, and Pascoes has also been hit several times.
Most of the thieves have one thing in common - they're just kids.
"Twelve, 13, 14-year-olds. It is these young fells who are sent out to do damage, to rob places, and this is their initiation," Lodhia said.
Some robberies are just random but others are after gold since gangs will melt it down to sell in nuggets.
"In 1:38, they cleaned us out to the tune of about $600,000 to $700,000, which translates to about 5kg to 6kg of gold," Lodhia said.
To help stop it, he said that police need to be given more powers.
"These kids are fearless, they are challenging the police all the time."
Killa also said the burglars need to face higher repercussions.
"We feel there's no consequences for people who do these sorts of crimes, they are able to walk away really, really easily."
For Raniga, while he is "totally disgusted" with their behaviour, he thinks there is a more effective way to help the teens grow up.
"In the back of my mind, there's a human side of me which thinks and talks and says there's a better way of bringing these people up. This is not life, this is not what you do in life."
But until something does change, there'll be more sleepless nights for the jewellery store owners.
"I am still traumatised. I am constantly thinking it could happen in the next five minutes, it could happen in the next minute."
