Evan Parnwell chose to cough up and pay hundreds of dollars to a private investigator to track down the burglar who struck his Kaharoa home.
Mr Parnwell lives on Te Waerenga Rd at Kaharoa, near Rotorua, and is one of a growing number of burglary
victims paying for a private investigator for their piece of mind.
His family home was burgled in the middle of last year - when $120 cash was stolen - and again in September when his house was "cleaned out" of more than $10,000 worth of property.
He said police did not attend the first burglary, which was on a Friday, until the following Tuesday.
"We didn't use our door knobs and watched what we touched during the entire time because we didn't want to disturb the fingerprints. There was also a good footprint left behind and I covered it over. But it was all destroyed by the time police arrived."
Mr Parnwell said he called a private investigator because he felt as if he was just one in a huge pile of burglary victims and doubted his case would be thoroughly investigated.
He stressed that he did not blame the police at all, saying he was aware how pushed they were for time. But he felt so strongly about the lack of police resources he hit up Rotorua MP Steve Chadwick while she was campaigning before the election and asked for more police. "I didn't get the response I was after. I was just told she was happy with the number of police and it was more to do with how they were managed."
He said the private investigator believed his burglary was committed by a woman and he offered a couple of suspects' names. Mr Parnwell said he was yet to pay the private investigator but expected the bill to be in the hundreds.
While he said he was not happy about it, he was prepared to pay to try to put the culprit behind bars.
