Streets ‘fair game to any moron in a Mazda’

The sound of the impact came a split second before that of breaking glass. Asleep, but only lightly so after coughing and spluttering all night, it could easily have been mistaken for a dream and dismissed as such. Just roll over in search of the elusive slumber.

Immediately after the breaking glass came the pierce of the burglar alarm. The wail was insistent and ongoing. Even half awake there was no confusion as to the meaning. Crime was announcing its presence in the neighbourhood.

Living above Hamilton’s Victoria St you become accustomed to the night chorus.

The 4am drunks, the belligerent bums, the early morning melodrama as this or that broken family air dirty laundry at maximum volume, determined that you miss no single detail of their private life.

This was different. This was urgent and contemporary. This was the modus operandi of the moment, the preferred practice of disaffected youth in the 2020s.

Vehicular smash and grab! Drive – literally – into your selected store, enter via the gap created, load up swiftly then exit the way you came, hoping your (presumably) stolen car is still up to the challenge. If you are extra lucky the whole show gets uploaded to the internet via CCTV footage. You get the street cred as well as the goods. And the cops do nothing. Well, next to nothing. In the unlikely event of apprehension just plead your age. Society is to blame.

I would be a liar if I did not confess that the prospect of a ramraid in progress didn’t fill me with as much excitement as middle class indignation. I wasn’t the only one.

As the burglar alarm continued to announce the obvious, a distinctive voice rang out. Someone was providing a running commentary on proceedings, narrating events, albeit with a critical eye.

‘‘You’re f...ing amateurs!’’ yelled this aficionado, perturbed at the haphazard methodology he was witnessing. In his estimation the junior felons were simply not up to scratch.

Intrigued, I finally stumbled out of bed, attempting to gain a better vantage.

At this stage it wasn’t clear exactly which business was being violated. My first fear was that it was Mark One Comics, immediately below us. Would the kids favour Marvel or DC?

Thankfully, a glance at the position of our narrator friend suggested a target further north. He had stopped his car on the other side of the road and was hurling his abuse from a safe distance. It was still impossible to confirm which was the unfortunate shop in question. I prayed it was not The Grumpy Baker, lest this interfere with mince and cheese pie sales later in the day.

The wife was still up. Blearyeyed, I conveyed the news. She had the foresight to check the clock. It was 1.40am.

Bristling with rectitude, it was time to do my civic duty. There was only a moment’s pause between the dialling of 111 and the expected answer. Connected to the constabulary, I made every effort to stress the need for an immediate response. ‘‘It’s happening right now!’’ I muttered, with just a hint of exasperation as the officer struggled with the geography of Hamilton’s main street.

Thinking my job was done, I hung up. He rang back shortly thereafter, requesting the type of detail which could not be readily supplied from an unsighted first floor, south of the incident.

Was the officer suggesting I take some action myself? There was just a hint of this in his voice. Perhaps not quite a green light for vigilantism but if I were to approach the scene what other options would I have? What would Clint Eastwood do? How would Charles Bronson rise to the occasion? Dressed in my pyjamas, a rather pathetic mid-50s specimen, likely suffering from long Covid, was effecting a citizen’s arrest possible?

In an ideal world the .357 magnum would have been strapped on. As a veteran consumer of revenge fantasy action films I certainly knew the drill. Did those punks feel lucky? Shoot first, ask questions later or not at all.

This dream evaporated quickly. I told the cop to send a car or two post-haste. It is 1.2 km from the Hamilton Central Police Station to Vape2go, which turned out to be the target. According to the neverwrong Google Maps it takes 4 minutes to drive this distance, a calculation no doubt premised on civilian speeds. With the advantage of heavy foot and sirens, surely it could have been traversed in a fraction of this time? There was always the probability that at least one police car was even closer, patrolling the CBD.

Alas, justice was both delayed and denied. Despite at least two others ringing the police and another eyewitness besides my narrator friend, the authorities could not muster an effective response. One of the two who telephoned was also asked to give up a position of relative safety to gather further evidence, a request he quite rightly declined. If the police are not sufficiently motivated to attend a crime as it is unfolding, when they have multiple testimonies to the fact, why should a member of the public endanger him or herself?

Close circuit television footage, later released to the media, displays the ramraid in all its hideous detail, complete with the vehicle’s number plate. One wonders exactly how much information is required to effect an arrest.

The fact that the scene of the crime was not dusted for fingerprints until 9am does not suggest that the violation of Vape2go was a first-order priority.

Those with issues about vaping stores or concerns about societal breakdown and the relationship between inequality and crime miss a more fundamental point. I feel for a fellow, law-abiding retailer and fear for my neighbours. A constabulary that is disinterested or under-resourced or both instils no confidence in the rule of law. When the streets are fair game to any moron in a Mazda it’s a good thing to live one flight up.

In an ideal world the .357 magnum would have been strapped on. As a veteran consumer of revenge fantasy action films I certainly knew the drill. Did those punks feel lucky? Shoot first, ask questions later or not at all.