Mike Hosking: Anger after robberies shows how offside NZ is with Govt

A couple of things made one of the latest robberies a little different. Firstly, one of the witnesses called it a ram raid. I'm not sure it was. It looked more like good old fashioned daylight robbery, but it shows you how quickly language is adopted and adapted. The Ellerslie jeweller in Auckland was turned over by a bunch of thugs. They were rounded up and five of them and appeared in court yesterday. The jeweller is also an engraver. We have used them over the years. We used to hand out small trophies as a sort of Christmas gimmick. You would win a trophy for a different act or attribute. That engraving was done at the jewellery shop that made headlines this week for all the wrong reasons. They think they will be closed for a couple of months. That's a long time for any one, far less a jeweller in the Christmas season - and a lot of shocked staff. The other aspect of the story if you haven't read it, were the couple of bystanders who gave chase and took the thugs on, and that is why they got rounded up so quickly. That sort of activity makes them heroes. The police, of course, would argue you shouldn’t do something like that. But that is what you get when things get as out of control as they have. You get anger. And you get people determined to send a message, to do the right thing, or just help the best way they know how given the circumstances. Another thing that stood out was the commentary from the victim. He commended the frontline police, the off duty officers who came from the gym. But he holds the ivory tower responsible for this. That's the Government. He says these families don’t need to be robbing stores and the Government has more than enough resources to help educate, feed, clothe and house them. Is he wrong? Of course, he isn't. What gives a thug or five thugs the sense that a robbery in broad daylight in the middle of a shopping strip is in any way acceptable, far less something you are going to get away with? The answer is attitude. The attitude is driven from the top down approach that crime isn't punishable, not this sort of crime anyway. They are emboldened? How do they get emboldened? Because although they're thugs, they're not thick, they see what happens, and what doesn’t happen. They can work the odds out, so they go for it. What happened this time is a tight knit community of fed up constituents that expect better did something about it. But the anger, frustration, and commentary that followed tells you just how offside the real New Zealand is with the Government that runs it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.