"I'm watching you!"
What do you do in a situation like this? I am at a Tauranga playground and was utterly terrified that any move I made would result in him attacking. I believe the man was definitely high on something. When someone's that unpredictable, anything could set them off. I invoked the age-old response of pretending he wasn't there, hoping he'd go away. Classic fight, flight or freeze.
"Yeah, he's yelling at people walking past and drinking alcohol. He's standing at [landmark] and waiting for people to come close." A man on his cellphone was giving a blow-by-blow account to the police operator. "He just yelled '**** all of you' and started walking towards X Street."
As the shirtless man walked past the playground, the box under his arm, I joined my son at his high vantage point and tried to make myself unobtrusive.
"He's walked down Y Street, I can't see him anymore," the man on the phone continued and hung up soon after. I and the other mother who had been yelled at were both pretty shaken and decided to remain at the playground a bit longer in case we encountered him on the street or on the way back to our cars.
Safety in numbers.
Ten minutes or so later, a lone police car ambled on by, and disappeared.
Whether that particular police car was looking for the shirtless man or not, I don't know. But it still left a feeling of helplessness to see one so long after the incident. It felt like the shirtless man could have snapped at any moment and attacked someone.
It felt like we were in danger.
I'm not an idiot. I know our policing resources are finite. For all I know, there could have been a multi-vehicle pile-up on the other side of the city that was pulling all available police officers away.
But when you're in the midst of what feels like an emergency, the thought that others might have it worse than you isn't exactly comforting.
Reports of harassment and intimidation in public spaces appear to be on the rise in Tauranga, with numerous incidents of threatening behaviour being reported in recent weeks, particularly around bus stops and shopping centres.
In Tauranga, one incident included a swarm of eight or so youths forcing a bus to stop, climbing aboard, damaging the bus and verbally abusing the driver.
Police have seized knives and a homemade taser from youths in the Tauranga CBD. A shopping centre employee was attacked.
Bus drivers have been boycotting some of the worst stops.
What on earth is going on? Our shopping centres have a reputation for attracting ne'er-do-wells, particularly beggars, but it's almost as if a switch has flipped in the last two or three months.
Generic anti-social behaviour seems to have ramped up to a point where our streets are feeling unsafe.
What's the answer? More police? Even if we could magically summon some more officers from the abyss like I wanted to at the playground (bibbidi bobbidi boo, here are three police officers for you!), would that fix anything?
The point isn't to catch ne'er-do-wells in the midst of a crime, it's to prevent that crime from occurring in the first place.
The safest I've ever felt in Tauranga city centre was just after the first Covid lockdown in 2020. I remember walking the streets and seeing not a single soul sleeping in a doorway or digging through rubbish bins.
Tauranga was given 50 additional emergency housing places during that time to get people off the streets. I know well the difference between correlation and causation, but there does appear to be some connection.
According to a study published in The Lancet Public Health in 2018, children in the top 20 per cent of wealthiest families in their first 15 years of life were the least likely to self-harm or commit violent crimes between the ages of 15 and 30. Children who were in the bottom 20 per cent during their formative years were seven times more likely to self-harm and 13 times more likely to commit violent crimes as adults.
Thirteen times. We can infer from this that the more poverty our society has, the more crime we suffer and the more harm is done to our young people.
Is it any surprise, then, that there has been such a visible amount of crime during one of the hardest times we as a country have faced since the Great Recession?
When crime surges, we should look to society for an explanation, and to alleviate poverty for an answer.
-Sonya Bateson is a writer, reader and crafter raising her family in Tauranga. She is a millennial who enjoys eating avocado on toast, drinking lattes and defying stereotypes. As a sceptic, she reserves the right to change her mind when presented with new evidence.
