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Bag snatching has become a major problem for shoppers and police in South Auckland.
The crime has been increasing since 2005. It became a major focus of a dedicated police unit this year following two incidents where women were injured while trying to protect their bags.
One of the incidents was in the underground carpark at Manukau, while the other was at Botany. Both women received superficial injuries.
Senior Sergeant Richard Wilkie, the officer in charge of the district's mobile police station tasked with looking at the bag-snatching problem, said a lot of work had gone into educating women so they were deemed less attractive targets to thieves.
Operations targeting bag snatchers had also been run and 26 people were arrested between mid-March and May. Since then the number of thefts had dropped to three a week.
However, Mr Wilkie said one of the problems was that bag snatchers evolved - going from taking the bags out of trolleys to now entering cars.
