The fear that's descended on Auckland's CBD

Monday, 12 December 2022

The shooting at Sofitel in Auckland was captured on CCTV and shows a Mongols member and hotel employee quickly running for cover. (This video has no sound)

Verity Johnson is an Auckland-based writer and business owner. She is a regular contributor to Stuff.

OPINION: Auckland’s Karangahape Rd at 10am on a Sunday morning is a surreal place.

It’s still loud, gritty, and endearingly tacky. But it’s undeniably deflated, like a popped party piñata that’s been left outside overnight to dissolve in its own silly string.

It’s also dead. There’s a rule here that nothing happens on Sunday except coffee.

* Word on the Street: When did you last see a cop on the beat?

Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua takes us on a tour that outlines Karangahape Rd's Pasifika past (video published April 2022).

* When did Karangahape Road become so posh?

But when I arrive at my local, it’s all kicking off.

A twitchy dude in a stained orange jacket is outside yelling at the manager. A tense knot of people are throbbing around him, unsure how to respond.

He gestures violently, as if to take something out of his jacket. Everyone flinches. But the manager throws up her hands and cries, move on, just move on, it’s Sunday!

He starts yelling again, trying to provoke her, but she turns and storms off and the crowd refuse to respond to him. So he shouts, swears and sullenly slopes off to the next venue.

A protest outside Jacinda Ardern’s Mt Albert electoral office, after the killing of dairy worker Janak Patel during a robbery. Patel’s death is one recent crime that is feeding a backdrop of unease around Auckland, writes Verity Johnson.

“Are you OK?” we ask her as we move inside, “what was that about?”

“He’s not a local,” she grimaces, meaning he wasn’t part of K Rd’s street community who largely get on with the businesses, “and he was acting like he had a gun.”

Everyone flinched. Not because we’re unaccustomed to trouble. (I mean, this is K Rd.) But because Orange Jacket represents everything we’re most scared of right now. A shooting.

The CBD feels mercurial at the moment. Like it’s a full moon, all day, every day.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, K Rd had an aggravated robbery at a clothes store. The assailants are alleged to have punched out a security guy working at a bar next door.

Karangahape Rd, deserted during a Covid lockdown but usually full of life and colour – and recently, a more menacing element, writes Verity Johnson.

Gang stand-offs have become normal. Police are often seen closing off streets. Coloured bandannas have started sticking out of back pockets. New, hard-eyed faces have moved in and started harassing locals.

And this is all happening against a city-wide backdrop of ramraids, burglaries, the Viaduct shooting, the Walking Dead Covid years, and the recent tragic stabbing of Janak Patel.

Now, I know that nowhere-is-safe-these-days is typically the spittle-flecked intellectual domain of rabid right-wing radio pundits (those who never go out, but know for certain that the CBD is a hellhole of late night vice).

Verity Johnson’s beloved K Rd has changed, and she doesn’t like what she sees.

But I work in those supposed hellholes of nocturnal debauchery, and I’ve always loved them.

I’ve never felt unsafe. Not until recently.

It’s not just the ramraids or burglaries that get to me, it’s the erratic, volatile energy coursing through the city like a badly wired kettle. It’s unnerving.

And it’s not just me, nor is it just Auckland. Ipsos, which polls Kiwis for the issues they’re most concerned about, has crime fears at the highest levels since it began polling in 2018. It’s been steadily increasing since February this year.

Lots of people don’t feel safe in New Zealand right now. Sure, we’ve never quite been the Teletubbies-and-sunshine post-crime paradise we like to think we are. But equally, it’s never felt quite like this, as though long-suppressed social issues are bubbling over furiously.

And yet the infuriating thing is, no-one knows what to do about it.

Most of the factors behind crime (poor mental health services, intergenerational poverty, and housing scarcity) are the very ones that Labour was supposed to tackle in its wellbeing budget.

And yet here we are, almost four years later.

But equally, I’m not soothed by Christopher Luxon’s infantile simplicity of youth offender boot camps. In fact, neither of the major political parties inspire much confidence in a twitchy, strung out populace.

Instead, we’re all just sitting here, exhausted, uncertain, and hoping it doesn’t get worse.