Any thief who thinks ripping off tourists is a victimless crime because the visitors just claim insurance and move on needs it rammed into their thick skulls that they are robbing locals at the same time.
I have lived in tourist towns - true tourist towns that rely heavily on visitors spending money to keep the local economy going. Anyone who robbed a tourist in those towns was likely to get lynched - because ripping off tourists takes food off the tables of locals.
As a town, and as a region, we have the ability to rally together and make tourism crime as unacceptable as any other socially abhorrent crime. If Northland wants its tourism potential to be fulfilled, and Whangarei truly wants to reinvent itself as a tourism locale, then locals have a responsibility to place tourism crime beside domestic violence as a big "no-no".
And sooner, rather than later, lest the tourism boat sails before it even gets here.
