Burglars and car thieves have developed a new ploy to help them carry out break-ins in broad daylight - they are disguising themselves as road workers in day-glo vests.
Police in Point Chevalier, Auckland, said there had been several incidents where men wearing orange roadwork vests stole cars
and raided homes. Community constable Brendon Muir said he had also encountered thieves using fake orange lights on top of their four-wheel drives to sneak on to construction sites to steal equipment in New Lynn.
"The witnesses [to the crimes] said they saw guys in orange glo-vests. Given there's a lot of roadworks going on the area, all the guys are wearing orange glo- vests," said Muir.
In one incident two people in day-glo vests approached workmen to check no one in the immediate area owned a car before they towed it away.
"They went up to the workmen and said, 'are you guys here to look at that car?"' a resident said. "The workmen said 'no'. And so they hooked it up and took it away.
"We asked the workmen, 'what did they look like? And they said, 'just like us'. How cheeky is that?"
Muir said it was possible there had been similar thefts before. No one suspected a man in uniform, and people rarely thought twice if they saw someone who looked official doing something suspicious. They just thought it was part of their job.
In his newsletter Muir has warned Point Chevalier residents to keep an eye on anyone acting suspiciously. If the public were concerned about any road or construction workers they should ask for identification.
