A storm in a Coke bottle

Security footage of a shoplifter at a South Auckland dairy, which has been at the centre of a huge row over police attitudes to petty crime.

It was a petty neighbourhood crime that spiralled into a national scandal more hotly debated than most murder cases.

And at the epicentre of this political upheaval that shook the Government and the police force stood an 18-year-old youth who may or may not have stolen a bottle of Coke.

Yesterday, the youth's mother and the manager of the South Auckland dairy he was accused of stealing from were staggered that a local matter that should have been dealt with in an hour by police catapulted them into the national spotlight.

The dairy manager became an unwitting whistleblower this week after he received a letter from police saying they would not investigate the shoplifting at his store because they had "limited resources".

He had even given them security video footage of the suspect, the youth's first name and his former workplace.

The dairy manager told a customer about the letter, the customer contacted Act Party leader Rodney Hide, and Mr Hide contacted the media.

A stack of questions were asked in Parliament, thousands of words were written in newspapers, TV networks went through reels of tape, hours of radio talkback were filled, and the police, its union and other parties put out a fax-full of press releases.

At the bottom of this pile, the youth's mother is worried that her son is being made a pin-up boy of crime for a minor offence she is quietly confident he didn't commit.

She said her house had been staked out this week by the Sunday Star-Times and she had spent the last few days consulting law advocates and begging the media to back off.

"If there's an issue with my son, so be it. Let the police and the dairy-owners and my son work it out. Don't throw us in the limelight.

"Who is anyone to say he's already guilty without the police even coming round?

"It's sad that these parties have been thrown into the limelight and none of us want to be there. It's strange and it's sad. It's sad that people in suits who we call leaders of our country can do that to innocent people," said the mother.

"There's what, nine-odd rapes unattended in Otara, so why is a bottle of drink more important than these nine rapes? I don't know - it's ridiculous."

And the dairy manager yesterday begged Mr Hide to call off the media.

The Indian-born man, who does not want to be identified for fear of being victimised, handled the inquiries reluctantly, and only because he thinks there's a wider issue that deserves attention.

The shoplifting problem was bigger than his corner dairy and the bottle of Coke, he said. It was affecting shop-owners throughout South Auckland. And what was worse was the seeming reluctance of police to investigate.

He said that for 14 of the last 15 years his family-owned store had no problem with shoplifters, but in the last year he had been hit by theft once a fortnight.

"We're not worried about the amount [of money we're losing to shoplifters], but it's happening so often. They're not even hiding their faces any more because they know nothing's going to happen to them. Now we are stopping bothering to go to the police, if they are saying 'We're putting your case on file'."

He said the young man he suspects of stealing the soft drink, and his mother, were both good, regular customers. He knew where to find the teenager and could easily confront him himself, but that wasn't his job.

The point is that the police didn't even try.