Kia ora,
I’m Matthew Tierney, manager of the New Zealand Police National Retail Investigation Support Unit. This unit was established in November 2021 and became operational in June 2022 to target the most prolific, repeat retail theft offenders. We collate all the evidence from reported retail crimes across the country, focusing on patterns of high harm repeat offending. We then complete the entire file to prepare for prosecution and send it to local police to locate and arrest the offender. This supports our frontline police to hold retail crime offenders to account. To date we have arrested 350 offenders and laid 2000 charges.
The National Retail Investigation Support Unit also works closely with retailers and crime prevention organisations at a national level. We want to help them understand the ever-changing retail crime environment and give them information and advice on security measures to support the safety of their staff and communities.
Our aim is to work together to minimise opportunities for retail offending. I strongly encourage retailers to report all crime at their premises to police. This enables Police to better understand the retail crime environment and make staffing deployment decisions to combat it.
Whilst Police may not be able to attend your store at the time of the offence, we still do our best to hold the offenders to account. We will continue to work on retail crime from multiple angles; prevention, response, and with partners and community.
Ngā mihi