Glengarry Wines on Jervois Rd in Herne Bay was targeted by ram raiders. Photo / Hayden Woodward
A storied family-owned business in Auckland has revealed the shocking financial and emotional toll of dozens of ram raids and smash-and-grabs.
Glengarry Wines general manager Liz Wheadon said the chain’s stores have suffered 42 burglaries in recent years.
The majority had happened in the past 18 months, she said.
While the upscale wine chain has insurance, the dozens of raids have still cost them a little over $256,000.
The burglaries include the typical ram raids committed by young offenders who are generally caught, such as the alleged ram raid of its Takapuna store in Hurstmere Rd in September.
But they also include a more sophisticated operation in September by a group of older men targeting rare and valuable vintages in the cellar at Glengarry’s Jervois Rd store in Herne Bay, its original site.
It is a crime the store’s management and a wine expert believe had the hallmarks of a targeted heist-to-order.
The latest ram raid targeting the business happened about 2.30am on Wednesday, also at the Jervois Rd store.
Police have yet to make an arrest in relation to either the September burglary, where a window was jemmied open after the offenders cased the premises, or Wednesday’s ram raid.
The business was started by Croatian immigrant Josef Jakicevich, whose work as a stonemason in Auckland allowed him to buy 10 acres (4ha) at Glengarry Rd in West Auckland and plant a vineyard.
He obtained one of the first two wine-resellers licences in 1948 for the Jervois Rd site, a greengrocer’s store he opened the year before.
Jak Jakicevich, Josef’s grandson, dug the cellar beneath the store where the September burglars went to work.
Wheadon said that when news came through on Wednesday Josef’s daughter-in-law and family matriarch was devastated.
“She broke down in tears,” Wheadon said.
Wheadon, who herself managed the Herne Bay store for several years before rising through the ranks of the company, said the raids were taking their toll on staff.
They were looking forward to a champagne sale this week. Footage showed the ram raiders stealing and smashing the very champagne staff were looking forward to talking to customers about, Wheadon said.
“Instead they’re dealing with this rubbish,” she said.
“They deserve to feel safe at work.
“We’re a family-owned business that employs a lot of people.
“There are families that rely on the business.”
The chain has adopted various prevention measures, including bollards, barrels filled with sand and grates on windows.
“We’ve got everything that everyone’s asked us to do,” Wheadon said.
But the raids keep coming.
Wheadon said Glengarry was not eligible for the police’s $6 million Small Retailer Crime Prevention Fund because it was not deemed a small business.
She did not call for harsher penalties against the mostly very young people involved in ram raids.
Wheadon declined to comment on whether she would support National Party leader Christopher Luxon’s controversial proposal, announced this week, for a young-offender military academy for teenagers, saying she had not researched it enough.
However, she believes something needs to change.
“How do we stop this? What do we do?”
In August, at the launch of the prevention fund, Acting Assistant Police Commissioner David Lynch said there have been more than 1000 ram raids and 768 people arrested for the offending since 2017.
Around the same time, Police Minister Chris Hipkins said of the 129 ram raids from May to August this year that nearly all were committed by people under 18.
Of the 129 raids, 84 were in Auckland.
Last weekend, thieves ram-raided or smashed their way into five Auckland businesses in a single night.
The burglaries targeted a ram raid into a North Shore dairy and stationery shop as well as damage to a restaurant, Subway outlet, vaping store and car yard.
Police were called to the five businesses within a space of three hours early on Saturday.
Luxon, announcing the new crime policy on Thursday, said young offenders would be able to be sent to the militarised boot camps for up to 12 months.
As part of the policy, a new category of offender would be created, dubbed Young Serious Offenders, or YSOs, covering people aged 10 to 17 who had committed more than one serious offence, including a ram-raid or other aggravated burglary, or a serious assault.
YSOs aged 15 to 17 would be eligible to be sent to the camps for up to a year.
He said National’s plan would help keep the community safe and also help rehabilitate some offenders.
“No place is immune from the youth crime wave, but some are being hit harder than others,” Luxon said.
“Enough is enough.”
The young offender military academies would be set up in partnership with the Defence Force alongside other providers, according to a press statement from National.
As part of the policy, termed the “Combating Youth Offending Plan” National would also give police the power to ban gang patches and stop gang members gathering in public.
Some YSOs would be ordered to undertake “intensive supervision” by community organisations under the policy, National said.
The policy received a critical response from criminologists.
Auckland criminologist Ronald Kramer called the concept “a joke”.
He told the Herald that without a better environment for the young people to re-enter after a stretch, the lessons learned in such military academies would be pointless.