They took our computer, and everything from there forward," says hairdresser Lucy Parks, making a sweeping movement across the front of Elouise hair salon where she works on Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn.
"They're pretty game, smashing a window on a main street," she says.
"There was about seven or eight hundred dollars in our till. We'd been away, closed for two weeks."
Salon owner Elouise Wilson says after their ordeal, local clients told her of burglaries in their own homes.
"One client lives in a warehouse-type building and she was asleep when she was burgled. Another of our clients was burgled when she was in the shower."
The salon is just one of a number of shops in the block of Surrey Cres stores that have been hit in a spate of burglaries in the area recently.
The takeaway shop next door was also broken into and the till stolen.
The real estate premises further around the corner also had an attempted break in.
"It's like they just lined them up," says Miss Wilson.
Other shop owners in the area told The Aucklander they had seen car windows smashed, tyres slashed, and a rise in graffiti in their streets.
Auckland central police spokeswoman Noreen Hegarty says there has been a slight increase in reported crime in the Grey Lynn area, compared to rates at the same time last year.
She could not give specific statistics on the number of offences but the rise goes against a regionwide trend of a decline in crime across Auckland.
Miss Parks, who was a police officer before becoming a hairdresser, says Grey Lynn presents an interesting mix of residents from different socio-economic groupings.
"It's got a lot of character," she says. "It's had the highest level of growth in real estate. But then there are a lot of homeless people around.
"It's on that border where there's some good and some bad."
She said often people get bailed to certain areas.
"You go to the bottom of that hill [she gestures], and it has a lot of Housing New Zealand homes.
"It's a lower socio-economic area."
Grey Lynn Business Association chairman Paul Dalton says locals are fed up with the wash of crime that has enveloped their community, and an action plan is being prepared.
"We're going to hold a town meeting to find out what people's concerns are and then work out exactly what our action plan is," he says.
"The local police will be there to answer any questions as well as other business association chairs to share what they have done in their community."
The Grey Lynn constable did not return calls from The Aucklander.
Last year, the Williamson Ave Countdown [trading as Foodtown at the time] was held up at gunpoint, while the Grey Lynn post office was robbed twice.rebecca.blithe@theaucklander.co.nz
MEETING WITH THE COMMUNITY
A Grey Lynn community safety meeting will be held on Friday, November 4, from 7pm to 8pm at the Grey Lynn Community Centre, 510 Richmond Rd.
