Glengarry Wines on Jervois Rd in Herne Bay was targeted by ram raiders. Photo / Hayden Woodward
Glengarry Wines on Jervois Rd in Herne Bay was targeted by ram raiders. Photo / Hayden Woodward
A storied family-owned business in Auckland has revealed the shocking financial and emotional toll of dozens of ram raids and smash-and-grabs.
Glengarry Wines general manager Liz Wheadon said the chain’s stores have suffered 42 burglaries in recent years.
The majority had happened in the past 18 months, she said.
While the upscale wine chain has insurance, the dozens of raids have still cost them a little over $256,000.
The burglaries include the typical ram raids committed by young offenders who are generally caught, such as the alleged ram raid of its Takapuna store in Hurstmere Rd in September.
The car smashes into the front of Glengarry Jervois Rd on Wednesday, captured in CCTV footage. Photo / Supplied
But they also include a more sophisticated operation in September by a group of older men targeting rare and valuable vintages in the cellar at Glengarry’s Jervois Rd store in Herne Bay, its original site.
Police have yet to make an arrest in relation to either the September burglary, where a window was jemmied open after the offenders cased the premises, or Wednesday’s ram raid.
One of the offenders rushes into the store on Wednesday. Photo / Supplied
The business was started by Croatian immigrant Josef Jakicevich, whose work as a stonemason in Auckland allowed him to buy 10 acres (4ha) at Glengarry Rd in West Auckland and plant a vineyard.
He obtained one of the first two wine-resellers licences in 1948 for the Jervois Rd site, a greengrocer’s store he opened the year before.
Jak Jakicevich, Josef’s grandson, dug the cellar beneath the store where the September burglars went to work.
Wheadon said that when news came through on Wednesday Josef’s daughter-in-law and family matriarch was devastated.
“She broke down in tears,” Wheadon said.
Monica Jakicevich in happier times, opening the spirits store at the Jervois Rd branch in 2019. Photo / Supplied
Wheadon, who herself managed the Herne Bay store for several years before rising through the ranks of the company, said the raids were taking their toll on staff.
They were looking forward to a champagne sale this week. Footage showed the ram raiders stealing and smashing the very champagne staff were looking forward to talking to customers about, Wheadon said.
“Instead they’re dealing with this rubbish,” she said.
She did not call for harsher penalties against the mostly very young people involved in ram raids.
Wheadon declined to comment on whether she would support National Party leader Christopher Luxon’s controversial proposal, announced this week, for a young-offender military academy for teenagers, saying she had not researched it enough.
However, she believes something needs to change.
“How do we stop this? What do we do?”
Glengarry third and fourth generation family members Aroha (left) and Angie Jakicevich in the wine cellar at Glengarry Wines Jervois Rd in Ponsonby where dozens of prized vintages were stolen in September. Photo / Dean Purcell
In August, at the launch of the prevention fund, Acting Assistant Police Commissioner David Lynch said there have been more than 1000 ram raids and 768 people arrested for the offending since 2017.
Around the same time, Police Minister Chris Hipkins said of the 129 ram raids from May to August this year that nearly all were committed by people under 18.
Last weekend, thieves ram-raided or smashed their way into five Auckland businesses in a single night.
The burglaries targeted a ram raid into a North Shore dairy and stationery shop as well as damage to a restaurant, Subway outlet, vaping store and car yard.
Police were called to the five businesses within a space of three hours early on Saturday.
CCTV footage of the Glengarry Ponsonby burglary shows a hooded person selecting the most expensive wines to take. Photo / Supplied
Luxon, announcing the new crime policy on Thursday, said young offenders would be able to be sent to the militarised boot camps for up to 12 months.
As part of the policy, a new category of offender would be created, dubbed Young Serious Offenders, or YSOs, covering people aged 10 to 17 who had committed more than one serious offence, including a ram-raid or other aggravated burglary, or a serious assault.
YSOs aged 15 to 17 would be eligible to be sent to the camps for up to a year.
He said National’s plan would help keep the community safe and also help rehabilitate some offenders.
“No place is immune from the youth crime wave, but some are being hit harder than others,” Luxon said.
“Enough is enough.”
One of the burglars carries a tub of fine wine during the September heist at Jervois Rd. Photo / Supplied
The young offender military academies would be set up in partnership with the Defence Force alongside other providers, according to a press statement from National.
As part of the policy, termed the “Combating Youth Offending Plan” National would also give police the power to ban gang patches and stop gang members gathering in public.
Some YSOs would be ordered to undertake “intensive supervision” by community organisations under the policy, National said.
The policy received a critical response from criminologists.
Auckland criminologist Ronald Kramer called the concept “a joke”.
He told the Herald that without a better environment for the young people to re-enter after a stretch, the lessons learned in such military academies would be pointless.
