Kate Hawkesby: No one seems to want to sort out crime in our CBDs

So the crime in Auckland is now reaching the point of ridiculous, and as I said yesterday, I don't know how it even gets reported without an all-out outcry at how barbaric we are becoming. So to recap the past couple of days - a 15 year old gets shot at on the motorway while innocently sitting in the back of the family car because some losers with guns decide they don’t like how her family's driving, so they just fire shots into the car. This on the day we covered what a flop the Government's firearms protection orders are, given they're designed to take guns off bad people and in six months how many times have they used it and done that? Twice, that's it. So bad people are out there with guns and we know it - they continue to have access to and operate firearms illegally and that's a major problem. The second major problem is the violence unfolding endlessly in our CBDs. Broad daylight 5.30pm on a busy Saturday downtown at the Auckland ferry terminal where by the way all the tourists are - I mean what a show we are putting on for them - a gang of thugs, a group of out of control young people start beating up.. kicking, punching, and stomping on.. this poor person.. right in front of everyone. Heart of the City's Viv Beck said she's been demanding urgent action on Auckland's violent crime for ages; longstanding requests have been seemingly all been ignored. There's not even a Police station in downtown Auckland for goodness sake, the nearest one is Ponsonby. People do not feel safe in Auckland's CBD anymore and it's a problem that's not going away, yet no one seems to want to fix it. Simon Bridges from the Auckland Business Chamber pointed out it's not just a social issue but an economic and business issue too. It needs addressing in the form of more Police presence and that request has been made over and over and over. In the last three months, three different members of our immediate family have been involved as victims of a crime, and the underlying common thread is that Police have been lenient, disinterested, and happy to let offenders go. One of the cases involved violence in downtown Auckland - and by violence I mean a punch to the head from behind which saw a kid in hospital for stitches while Police, despite having all the evidence and the offender right in front of them, did not arrest him. Another was a breaking and entering with destruction of property, and again with an offender at their fingertips, Police let him make his own way home, no remand in custody, just be a good boy and we'll see you in court, try not to break into anyone else's house before then. The third involves a man remanded on bail, with conditions, where of course he broke the conditions and re-offended. What I can't work out is - even if the top down message from government is to go lightly on crims and turn a blind eye or keep the prisons empty or whatever the banal ideology behind all this is, it's us who suffer. Our communities, our kids, our reputation as a country.   And it's the cops whose lives and jobs are made more dangerous too, as criminals get more emboldened. Their job only gets harder once crime rules; the job of policing becomes nigh on impossible - which it already is clearly. I just shake my head in disbelief at what's happening to this country and I’m not sure how we fix it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.