Speaking up to save others grief

Liz Boutet hopes others won't have to wait too long for police to turn up to investigate a burglary after she went public over her four-day wait for action after being burgled while she slept. Photo / John Stone

The victim of a burglary hopes by speaking out about her awful experience and the delay in the police response that others will not have to go through what she did.

Liz Boutet's Onerahi home was burgled while she, her husband and a Japanese exchange student slept upstairs.

She reported the crime as soon as it was discovered, with the missing items including a car, but it took four days for police to acknowledge the burglary and only after media intervention.

After questions were raised by the Northern Advocate last Friday, police admitted the job had been missed and a staff member had not been assigned to investigate. A police officer then visited her on Friday afternoon - the initial report having been made to police at 7am last Monday. "He was very apologetic," she said.

Mrs Boutet said she called police three times after the burglary to find out where her case was in the system.

She has since received numerous phone calls from friends who have shared their experiences of police responding to burglaries. She said it had got conversations flowing and she was not the only one in such a situation. As a result, she was hoping that once a burglary had been reported, the police would respond within 24 hours.

The policeman fingerprinted the door where the thieves broke in, but Mrs Boutet said it was pointless as they had handled the door after waiting for four days for police to arrive. After two days of waiting, her husband had used his work van the thieves had also broken into.

"All that evidence was gone. We'd given up on the police coming. We had to touch the doors to put new locks on them and my husband had to use his own transport to get to work."

They are also putting security systems in the house.

Whangarei and Kaipara area commander Inspector Justin Rogers said as soon as he was made aware of the burglary and that it had not be attended to, staff had been sent out to speak to the couple.

Police statistics for Northland show there were 2962 occurrences of unlawful entry with intent/burglary, break and enter which was nearly 20 per cent of the police workload in 2014. Of those 412 cases, or 13.9 per cent, were resolved.