BY SCOTT INGLIS
Four cops walk to the door and knock.
"Anyone home?" one yells.
Several windows are open, and a late-model Japanese car stands in the driveway. But there is no answer.
The officers walk slowly around the outside of the three-bedroom South Auckland brick home. They are suspicious because the windows of one bedroom are blacked out.
They climb through an open kitchen window, disable a burglar alarm, force a locked bedroom door - and stumble across thousands of dollars in cannabis plants.
But these policemen are not drug squad officers - they belong to the Counties Manukau Law Enforcement Team (LET), a specialised new unit set up to help cut South Auckland's burglary epidemic.
The 12-member squad is the last of eight formed nationwide. Each targets a crime "hotspot," such as burglaries, violence or car crime. The others are in Northland, North Shore-Waitakere, Central Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Gisborne and Christchurch.
The brainchild of the National Government, they are funded separately from other parts of the police and their staff cannot be poached for other duties.
Formation of the South Auckland squad this month comes as the new Government vows to get tough with burglars. Police were this week ordered to attend burglaries within 24 hours and under planned law changes will have the right to fingerprint children as young as 10.
The number of burglaries nationwide fell 5 per cent last year but still totalled 74,000.
Detective Sergeant John Tims, a 16-year police veteran and head of the South Auckland LET team, has been burgled. It is a "terrible, terrible" crime, he says. "Burglary affects everyone in the community."
At 7 am yesterday, three hours before their cannabis find, Detective Sergeant Tims and his team plonked themselves down in their first-floor room at the Papakura police station and prepared for the day ahead.
Mornings are spent reinterviewing people arrested overnight for burglary, taking voluntary blood samples from them for DNA records and executing search warrants. Afternoons are for paperwork and planning.
The team members are not the police who attend your burglaries or take complaints. Instead, they use intelligence, trends in break-ins and other clues to raid houses where they suspect there are criminals or stolen goods.
They are after any burglar, young or old, amateur or professional, domestic or commercial. Last year, 1176 burglars were caught in Counties Manukau police district. More than half were males aged between 14 and 20 and had carried out multiple raids.
Detective Sergeant Tims wants to take an active approach, encouraging the public to use a new Counties Manukau 0800 4 THIEF (0800 484 433) number to keep police informed. He also wants to recover as much stolen property as possible, something he says can be done only with the public's help.
The officers' progress so far is recorded on a whiteboard in their room.
Since starting on April 10, the team - Detective Sergeant Tims, Sergeant Richard Wilkie, four detectives, four constables and two civilian support workers - has arrested 18 people, warned nine others, referred six young people to youth aid and solved 133 burglaries.
No one is boasting yet, but the mood is upbeat.
Constable Greg Foster starts yesterday's morning briefing by telling his colleagues he is after two men, chased by a dog handler on Monday night and caught with a vanload of appliances and electrical equipment police suspect are stolen.
The pair were arrested, charged with theft, traffic and cannabis offences, appeared in court and were granted bail. They gave their respective addresses as Waipapa Cres, Otara, and McRae Rd, Mt Wellington.
Constable Foster says their white van was used in two major burglaries at Price Chopper - on April 24 and the week before in Otahuhu - and he wants to find out if they have any of the cigarettes taken in those raids.
The team divides in two. At Otara, a young boy and girl answer the door and their eyes bulge as they stare at three burly officers.
A man, who calls himself Edward, appears, rubs his eyes and denies he is the suspected burglar the officers are seeking.
But he looks similar and has similar tattoos.
Constable Foster stands in the doorway, trying to establish if the man is telling the truth. The policeman's eyes dart from a black-and-white file photo of the burglary suspect to Edward.
"You're close, eh. You haven't got any ID on you?" he asks.
Edward eventually finds a bank card, while another constable talks to his neighbours. A careful check of his identification and tattoos reveals he is telling the truth.
The suspect, an acquaintance of Edward, gave a false address. Edward's partner comes to the door, clearly unimpressed.
"We didn't hang with him. He just used to come here and was a nuisance," she snaps.
The officers leave and find that the other team also struck a false address in Mt Wellington.
They are frustrated, saying the addresses should have been checked by the arresting officers.
Detective Sergeant Tims: "Our actions are only as good as the information. It just makes our job more difficult."
The two burglary suspects, due to reappear in court next week, have breached bail by lying and will be dealt with on that matter.
After another unsuccessful raid, in Manurewa, one of the teams stumbles across the cannabis in Kerry Place, just five minutes from the Papakura police station.
The officers are at the house with a warrant, seeking property stolen in a robbery in Crestlands Place, Papakura.
A neighbour calls out to the police and explains that the man of the house is up north fishing.
Inside, two single beds are crammed into the lounge with three chairs. The 70 cannabis plants are a stark contrast to a child's school notice stuck to the kitchen wall, an empty baby bottle on a picnic bench in the kitchen and several baby photos on the lounge wall.
The aroma of cannabis wafts from the house as the officers work for an hour dismantling the hydroponic setup.
They pack the plants, ranging from seedlings to 1m high, into bags and load the rest of the equipment into a stationwagon to be taken back to the Papakura station for fingerprinting.
They carefully search the house for any property taken from Crestlands Place, but find nothing.
The officers leave a copy of the warrant and a note explaining that they have seized the cannabis and want to know who owns it. Detective Sergeant Tims says police often stumble across drugs when tracking down stolen property.
The LET team is already working closely with other police squads and stations to coordinate the offensive.
One such squad is the criminal intelligence section, headed by Detective Sergeant Mark Heron.
He says only a fraction of burglars are caught and points out that there is no standard profile - they can be male or female, rich or poor, organised or disorganised.
They usually steal property to sell rather than to keep. It is an industry that revolves around cash, and it cost insurance companies nearly $264 million last year.
Detective Sergeant Heron says society must treat burglary more seriously. "Society has let it become acceptable that burglary is an everyday occurrence, and the courts reflect that in their penalties."
Many other police officers also express dismay at what they say are inadequate sentences for burglars. The maximum is 10 years' jail, but many avoid prison even after a third or fourth conviction.
Detective Sergeant Tims, meanwhile, pleads for public help. "Our squad is not going to do it alone. It's a partnership with the community."
Battling burglary - a Herald series
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