No one’s on the scent of the perfume robber

Danny Gray with what's left of his imported perfumes. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Danny Gray says the police reaction to burglaries at his Albany perfume store stinks.

Thieves burgled Inoscense in mid-August, ripping him off again on September 18 in a ram-raid which netted about $30,000 worth of perfume.

"It was a mess - there was Chanel all over the floor," Mr Gray said.

He reported both incidents to Takapuna police who said they would investigate.

The detective in charge of Mr Gray's file told the Herald it was a simple case of having to prioritise cases.

"The file I'm working on at the moment is high priority, it's more recent and there's a better line of inquiry."

Detective Brett Henshaw said he explained to Mr Gray last week that he was in the middle of working on another case and when that was over he could look at his burglaries.

"It is possible that the lead I had been looking at isn't even related to his [case]," Mr Henshaw said.

Mr Gray said the officer had called him two weeks ago, saying police had seen a woman selling perfume out of the boot of her car in the city.

"He said they would get a search warrant to search her house which would take three to four days, but the cop also said he couldn't arrest her [on the spot] because it was only suspicion."

Mr Gray heard nothing more about the woman selling perfume from her car boot until the manager of his local bar said to him a woman had been selling perfume there.

"It was all filmed on security cameras."

Mr Gray called Mr Henshaw and said the manager of the bar was happy for police to look at the tapes.

Mr Henshaw said he had contacted the bar manager but had been unable to get to the bar to view the tapes because of other investigations.

"It's in the too-hard basket file at the moment," Mr Gray said.

"We have insurance but reckon we have lost about $4000, we've lost two lots of no claims bonuses from the insurance and we've had to fix the building."

He had lost faith in the police force. "It pays to be a criminal."