Flowers at a police cordon outside the Rose Cottage Superette in Sandringham where a worker was stabbed to death during a robbery. Photo / Dean Purcell
Flowers at a police cordon outside the Rose Cottage Superette in Sandringham where a worker was stabbed to death during a robbery. Photo / Dean Purcell
EDITORIAL
Working in a corner dairy, a jewellery store or a liquor outlet must be a frightening and stressful situation right now.
Each person approaching the threshold in hoodie and mask presents as a potentially violent confrontation as much as an opportunity for an amiable sale.
The fatal stabbing atthe Rose Cottage Superette in Sandringham on Wednesday night has heightened concern, as well as demands for urgent, effective action. The callous nature of the alleged crime is all the more staggering, a wheelie bin being trundled into the store to retrieve the cash register. On confronting the robber outside on the street, police say the shop worker was stabbed several times.
Some might say shop workers shouldn’t approach thieves, but that strays into the realms of victim-blaming. A young father and husband died on the floor of this Haverstock Rd business, moments after making his desperate call for help, He is not the one to blame.
Given this brutality occurred in the heart of the Prime Minister’s electorate, there’s no surprise that those grieving and angered have turned their outrage on our political leadership.
Dairy and Business Owners’ Association chairman Sunny Kaushal says “a sense of lawlessness is gripping the entire country”. He furiously declared “the Government has blood on its hands”.
Dairy and Business Owners Group chair Sunny Kaushal at the scene of the fatal stabbing. Photo / Jed Bradley
The public is rightly concerned for the lives of those working in these places, but also for themselves. This hits close to home, as any one of us could be suddenly in the midst of a violent robbery while innocently purchasing a mundane item.
A rash of recent ram raids has put more people on edge. Despite repeated warnings by police, a sickened and retributive public is becoming involved. The night before the death at the Rose Cottage Superette, a neighbour intervened during a ram raid on a Wellington liquor store, swinging a shovel at the raiders and forcing them to flee. Last week, two women chased hammer-wielding robbers as they made their getaway after robbing a jewellery store in Ellerslie.
This is all fertile ground for an Opposition. As the public demands more to be done, whatever the Government is doing will never appear to be enough. Police Minister Chris Hipkins has made some concession by asking for explanations after it was claimed the Sandringham superette owners had unsuccessfully sought more security such as fog cannons to deter a robbery.
This current generation of young New Zealanders has been seriously impacted by Covid. Many were not in school for their final years where preparations for life were previously supported. Their morals have been moulded via unregulated social media that glorifies bravado, and selfishness and frames sickening violence as entertainment.
Hipkins says ministers are looking at the nature of offending, as well as offenders and victims to develop targeted and effective measures to reduce crime. He says the “inflammatory rhetoric” from Sunny Kaushal isn’t “particularly helpful”. In this, respectfully, the minister is wrong. It is helpful if it galvanises the Government, its agencies, communities and whānau to find ways to intervene before more young people take the path to wheeling a bin into a convenience store to rob a business of its takings.
Short-term action is needed to mollify scared communities. More police presence is required, especially after frightening crimes to reassure an alarmed populace. Businesses seeking support with security measures must be heeded. Long-term solutions are also needed to work with this generation if we are in some small way to honour the young father who so senselessly lost his life while filling in for an absent shop owner.
