A ram raid at a Mobil petrol station in Karapiro in January 2022. Photo: NZ Police
Online behaviour experts say the sudden growth and equallyswift decline of ram raids in recent years shows a fading online craze - made harder by measures such as bollards and fog cannons.
But police said there were a range of factors at play and the offences had seen them change their response practices and speed up their engagement with young offenders and other social agencies.
'You can sleep a lot better'
Kapiti store owner Bhavesh Morar said he thought about chucking it all in when his business was struck by a ram raid in 2022.
His was one of the nearly one thousand businesses which used a government grant to install bollards, cameras and fog cannons.
"After we installed the bollards you can sleep a lot better - knowing that you've got the preventative measures in place. Because, obviously, you feel quite vulnerable. Whether it's your home or whether it's your business. It's the same sort of feeling," Morar said.
Offence data shows steady decline since August 2022
Police data showed reports of ram raid style burglaries peaked in August 2022 - with 86 incidents that month.
Incidents were collated using text searches of incident reports - for terms like 'ram raid' - to identify a set of occurrences that may be described as a ram raid incident.
Since 2022 the number has steadily declined.
This year there had been an average of nine ram raids a month - levels similar to before the pandemic.
Police data shows reports of ram raid style burglaries peaking in August 2022 - with 86 incidents that month - and receding in the following years. Photo: Police/Supplied
Professor Ekant Veer of Canterbury University said the majority of people participating in ram raids were between 14 and 17-years-old.
He said the age group was perfectly positioned to be influenced by online content glorifying the behaviour.
"[The] perfect social media-savvy group who have access to a vehicle - who have access to a lot of time - and who potentially thought 'this is quite cool and we might try this out and get away with it in some form' because that's what social media had effectively told them and taught them," Veer said.
Veer said the decline in the crimes most likely represented the novelty wearing off against a backdrop of a heightened awareness of the risks involved.
"After something has been cool for a bit - it doesn't stay being cool for long - it will drop away like any other trend.
"But there's also significant environmental factors here. There were dairies putting up bollards in front of their stores or even just concrete blocks in front of malls because as soon as a trend takes off it brings attention from people who want to prevent it as well. It became much, much harder," Veer said.
A BP petrol station in Wainuiomata was ram-raided using an excavator in May 2022. Photo: RNZ / Soumya Bhamidipati
Police used 'a range of strategies and interventions'
Assistant police commissioner Mike Johnson said police employed "a range of strategies and interventions that have all had an effect".
"We were able to improve our evidence gathering one, through social media [and] working with retailers. We changed our deployment as well, getting to hotspots [and] using preventative patrolling," Johnson said.
Johnson said police's 'Fast Track' programme - put in place in conjunction with Oranga Tamariki in 2022 - helped teams focus on "serious and persistent youth offenders" individually.
"Within 24 hours of identifying [or apprehending] an individual having a meeting and [then] having a plan within 48 hours to look at the immediate needs and interventions for that individual. Whether that's prosecutions - and it was in a lot of cases - and what those triggers were and what were the motivations for that individual and how do we have the most effect," Johnson said.
He said police needed to be flexible and utilise the partnering agencies best poised to influence young offender's individual circumstances.
"What's an effective intervention? It's not one-size-fit-all. It might be whanau focused. It might be family harm interventions in the environment and we can put that picture together through the information that we and other agencies hold," he said.
Young people's perspective missing
Clinical psychologist Armon Tamatea said a missing part of much of the discussion of ram raids was the experiences of the young people involved.
"I think we have a real aversion to listening to young people in this country and we have a real fetish about punishing our young people - hence boot camps and what not - as the go-to strategies with the current political climate.
"It's not to excuse the behaviour, of course, but often when young people get into offending it's usually a flag that there's a whole lot of other things going on in the back ground," Tamatea said.
CCTV footage of ram raiders at a Newmarket jewellery store. Photo: Supplied / NZ police
But Bhavesh Morar said a 'softly, softly' approach risked shifting the focus from the real victims.
"A lot of us, we work seven days a week. We work years on end and make a lot of sacrifices to be able to provide for our families. To have to deal with something like this, it gets to the point when it's [almost] tilting you over," Morar said.
He said he did feel more secure but he was always on the look out for suspicious vehicles and behaviour.
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