Police aren't looking to charge anyone after vigilante posters put up in West Auckland

One of the West Auckland posters. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Police have not received any official complaint after posters were put up around West Auckland showing the photos, names and addresses of people described as "Your local: Car thief, Boat Thief, Burglar, P Dealer".

The A4-sized posters have been plastered across power-boxes, lamp-posts, bus-stops and speed signs over the past month, but had now been shared online alongside vigilante-type comments from people fed up with crime in their community.

The posters feature two different people and two different addresses.

Despite the vigilante nature of the posters, police said they were "not aware of any official complaints in relation to this matter".

"However, we have looked into this, and we are aware that the posters have since been taken down," a spokesman said

"At this stage, we do not believe any criminal offence has taken place."

The spokesman said police were not aware of "any other posters in circulation" and that they would visit the addresses listed on the posters to check that people living at the homes did not have any complaints.

It is not clear who is behind the posters or where the information has came from but families living at the two named addresses say they are now apprehensive about what could happen.

They are also frustrated the posters went up without anyone checking who lives at the addresses first.

Shirley Barron and her daughter Dashir Thomas, who live at one of the addresses, said a man from one of the posters had rented a room at their home but left in September.

Thomas was confused as to why someone would go to the effort to print the posters but not visit the property first.

"No one came here to check he was living here."

Thomas said the family were first informed about the posters by a friend before Christmas. The friend had been removing the posters each time they appeared and the family hadn't had any problems so far.

Barron said she hadn't experienced anything like this before in her 30 years of living in the area and wasn't sure what to do about it.

"We didn't know what to do, whether to let sleeping dogs lie and just see if it will blow over," she said.

"Nobody has even said anything about it, like 'your name's on the street and the posters on the street', or anything about it."

A woman at the second address told the Herald the man on the other poster used to live there but doesn't any more. She didn't want to comment any further because her daughter was contacting the police about the posters.

Images of one of the posters were uploaded to social media yesterday but have since been deleted.